Not just any BBL

Many years ago as a reporter I covered a presidential visit to that no-man’s land straddling the borders of Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and South Cotabato.

I tagged along with a convoy of government security forces. They reassured me that with the ongoing peace negotiations with Islamic separatists, I would be safe. As the convoy trundled along a mountain road lined with huts, residents stood outside, watching us mostly in silence. Every hut had at least one man in rebel uniform, gripping a rifle, with a number of them wearing bandoliers.

What left an indelible impression on me, however, was the sight of numerous young boys, some of them also in what passed for uniforms and standing with obvious pride as they held rifles. They didn’t look older than 12, with some barely taller than their guns. But they had the intense gaze of adults, as if daring intruders to challenge their right to bear arms.

Those boys would be fathers by now – if they have survived the many encounters since then with government forces even as administration after administration struggled to put the Muslim enclaves along an irreversible path to peace. I wonder if those boys ever received formal education and if they are still bearing arms in furtherance of a cause.

A peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front has been in place in Mindanao since 1996, and it’s not yet even fully implemented. There is an autonomous Muslim region, with the provinces becoming members by choice, which was once governed by MNLF founding chairman Nur Misuari.

Now the government is working out another peace agreement with the MNLF’s breakaway group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The peace pact awaits the signing of the Bangsamoro Basic Law. For better or worse, it looks like the BBL enactment is being rushed to meet a timetable – not that of the MILF, but of an administration that hopes to have the law in place in time for President Duterte’s third State of the Nation Address (SONA) in July.

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A day after Duterte certified the BBL as urgent, Congress dutifully and overwhelmingly passed the measure.

The House of Representatives and Senate will still have to reconcile their versions of the BBL. With Congress adjourned, and with the sticking points quite contentious since they involve questions on constitutionality, the bicameral conference isn’t going to proceed as smoothly as the BBL’s approval by the House super majority.

In fact the BBL had languished in Congress while the administration pushed for Charter change to shift to a federal form of government. Duterte envisions federalism to be something akin to a cure-all for Mindanao’s problems.

Lawmakers, however, have sensed a shift in executive priorities after surveys showed a high percentage of Filipinos opposed to a change in the system of government, which will require a revision of the Constitution.

Akbayan party-list Rep. Tom Villarin indicated that while the idea of federalism has not been dropped, both Malacañang and Congress are aware of the survey results, so federalism has fallen in the totem pole of administration priorities.

In its place, the BBL has found new life, with the House voting 227-11 with two abstentions to approve it last Wednesday and senators working until way past midnight to pass its version by a vote of 21-0 early yesterday.

One of those who have worked tirelessly for the BBL, lawyer Anna Tarhata Basman, surely welcomed the approval as she let on that the federalism debate had distracted work on the BBL.

The youthful-looking lawyer, who obtained her masters in Islamic finance and management from Durham University Business School under a Chevening scholarship, headed the government peace panel’s legal team and is one of the key advisors in the peace process with the MILF.

Basman together with Villarin faced me and TV 5’s Ed Lingao on our talk show The Chiefs, which was aired on Cignal TV’s One News channel on the same night that the House passed the BBL.

Both of them stressed that the BBL is no silver bullet, no cure-all for the ills plaguing Muslim Mindanao. Rather, it is just one step in the tortuous effort to achieve lasting peace.

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The two are aware of the public cynicism surrounding yet another effort to forge a peace deal with yet another Islamic separatist group. Haven’t we been down this road before?

Even before Duterte enacts the BBL and a peace deal is forged, Mindanao is already suffering from attacks staged by the MILF’s breakaway faction the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters. That breakaway status, incidentally, became suspect after BIFF and MILF members gunned down 44 police Special Action Force members who were hunting down two international terrorists in Mamasapano, Maguindanao in 2015. And now we have the Mautes, which laid siege to Marawi for five months last year.

Basman stresses that the offenses imputed on the MILF in connection with Mamasapano have not been conclusively established. The Mautes are a different story, but she says the Islamic community is working to assist the government in confronting this threat.

There’s also concern over the seeming rush to have the BBL in place for reporting by Duterte at his SONA. Both Villarin and Basman, however, said that the approval didn’t actually happen overnight, since the two chambers have been deliberating on the BBL for some time.

But Basman conceded that while Muslims appreciate all the effort that has gone into the crafting and speedy passage of the BBL, they would prefer to see a carefully crafted law that can withstand constitutional challenges, which are likely to be brought before the Supreme Court.

Among the most basic questions is the plan to abolish the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which was created in accordance with a constitutional provision, and replace it with the Autonomous Region in the Bangsamoro. Can the new region have a parliamentary system under a presidential form of government? And can it receive a block grant to spend as it pleases?

The general impression is that the MILF simply wants to have control over its own autonomous region, with wider area coverage and carte blanche to spend public funds provided by the national government.

Foreign diplomats involved in the peace process told me they have received word that the MILF considers the BBL as the last chance for peace in Mindanao. So the approval by Congress of the proposed law is a welcome step toward peace.

After the collapse of the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain, Basman stresses that it can’t be just any BBL.