Speculations on Bangsamoro Law spread on social media

COTABATO CITY, Philippines --- Speculations on the real content of the draft Basic Bangsamoro Law (BBL) continue to spread around, fanned by alleged misunderstanding among its drafters and lack of transparency on how it aims to establish a self-governing Bangsamoro political entity.

Two members of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission, Johaira Wahab, and Fatmawati Salapuddin, were absent during the signing here of the draft law last April 20.

Two other BTC commissioners, Peter Eisma, and Froilyn Mendoza, affixed their signatures to the draft law with “reservations,” worsening public apprehensions that the draft law contained provisions the four commissioners were not in favor of.

The BTC, composed of seven representatives each from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government, is chaired by Muhaquer Iqbal, who is the MILF’s chief negotiator.

Oblate missionary Eliseo Mercado Jr., director of the Institute for Autonomy and Governance (IAG), said stakeholders to the Mindanao peace process deserve to know the reasons for the absence of the two commissioners in the historic signing of the draft BBL, and why the two others had signed the document with reservations.

“Moreover, we also want to read the draft BBL so we can reasonably comment on it, as it is. None other than the BTC commissioners and some members of the Office of the President have so far read the BBL. We would not really know its content, breadth and depth,” pointed out Mercado, whose extensive peace-building projects in Mindanao are being assisted by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) of Germany.

Mercado belongs to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI), whose pontifical base is in Rome. The OMI, which is also the congregation of Mindanao-based Orlando Cardinal Quevedo, has been operating various peace advocacy projects in Central Mindanao, and in the island provinces of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, since before World War II.

Mercado said an early dissemination to the public of the content of the BBL draft, before its endorsement to Congress for enactment, will encourage healthy and intelligent debates among members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPPAP) has refuted insinuations on Facebook by certain groups in Mindanao that it convinced three BTC commissioners representing the government not to sign the document.

GPH chief negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer was quoted in an OPAPP press communiqué as having dismissed the stories as nothing but rumors.

“OPAPP gave no instruction to any BTC commissioner not to sign the draft BBL," Ferrer said.

Ferrer’s denial was corroborated by the deputy chairman of BTC, the MILF’s Robert Maulana Alonto, who had said there was no truth to the allegations that were spread on social media.

“That is not true,” Alonto had told Catholic station dxMS in Cotabato City in a phone interview Monday.

Ferrer admitted holding meetings with government representatives to the BTC, but only for updates and consultations, not to convince them not to affix their signatures to the draft BBL.

Iqbal had told reporters, after the symbolic signing of the draft BBL at the BTC’s office along Rufino Alonzo Street in Cotabato City, that the proposed law had been subjected to thorough  and transparent deliberations.

The BBL, once enacted by Congress and ratified via a plebiscite in the proposed Bangsamoro core territory will replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) with an MILF-led Bangsamoro political entity.

ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman said Tuesday he believes the BBL will not discriminate and  marginalize the non-Moro indigenous people and the Christians in the proposed Bangsamoro core territory.

He said one “wrong idea” being spread to apparently mislead the local communities is the possibility that local government units – which are protected by the Local Government Code, also known as Republic Act 7160 --- could be disbanded once the Bangsamoro entity is in place, and that local officials would be stripped of their elective positions too, as a consequence.

Hataman said their main focus in the ARMM for now is  to effectively facilitate a smooth transition from the present administrative and political set up of the regional government, to the more politically and administratively empowered Bangsamoro entity.

“We shall be turning over to the government and the MILF a reformed ARMM, with a streamlined and professionalized personnel structure once the BBL becomes a duly ratified law,” Hataman said.