The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD) was a ploy to break up Mindanao into two or more pieces.
And if that MoA-AD had been signed, as planned, last August 5, the chief beneficiaries would have been the Bangsamoro, as represented by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), who would have attained the pre-requisites of a separate state – territory, army, separate laws, separate government, separate economy, international recognition – and the US, which would have been rewarded by the grateful Bangsamoro with permanent military bases from which to monitor the activities of the Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and Malaysia and the activities of the Chinese in the Spratly islands, as they have been doing in the past six years..
Left holding the proverbial empty bag would have been the stumblebum government in Manila which will be rewarded with some lollipops in the form of ancient hand-me-down fixed-winged aircraft and helicopters to replace those which its pilots have been crashing to the ground or into the sea with alarming frequency.
It has been pointed out by media that, contrary to the provisos in the 1987 Constitution, “visiting” American troops in Mindanao-Sulu-Basilan, supposedly to support Filipino troops in the war on terror, have been “visiting” continuously for the past six years.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita explains that this was so because American soldiers take turns serving six-month terms in the area and are constantly being replaced by other soldiers. “And since they all look alike, it looks as if they never leave.”.(Philippine Daily Inquirer, Sept. 07, 2008)
But, of course! Unlike the US soldiers in their permanent bases in Japan, South Korea and Germany, who have been continuously garrisoned there since the end of World War II in 1945 and are being replaced only as they die of old age.
Now that President Arroyo has, correctly, disbanded the GRP peace panel headed by retired General Rodolfo Garcia, and has refused to continue negotiations with the MILF “at gunpoint,” the next logical step would be to appoint someone else as presidential adviser on the peace process, to replace retired General Hermogenes Esperon, who should be appointed ambassador to Myanmar.
The next peace adviser should not be another former military general and should be someone from Mindanao, either Christian or Muslim, either male or female. If President Arroyo is grooming former Ilocos Sur Governor Luis “Chavit” Singson to replace Esperon, she should forget it. Singson is not from Mindanao and does not come with credible bona fides.
President Arroyo should choose from a short list prepared by concerned groups, to which I would nominate Adel Tamano, Irene Santiago, Amina Rasul and Margie Moran, aided by a battery of constitutional lawyers..
But President Arroyo should lay down the rules of the game, to which the new peace adviser and the new GRP peace panel must strictly adhere; otherwise, no go.
Chief among these rules should be the condition that any agreement must conform to the letter and spirit of the Constitution. In other words, no thinly disguised Trojan horses in which ChaCha dancers can hide and jump from at the first opportune moment, to perform their song-and-dance once they are inside Congress..
If President Arroyo can live with this limitation, she will convince one and all that she does not intend to stay in power beyond 2010.
(But even as I write this, House Speaker Prospero Nograles is floating the idea of amending the Constitution supposedly so that investors from the Middle East can be convinced to invest in mega-projects in Mindanao, such as a trans-Mindanao railway, on the grounds that the 40-60 constitutional limitation on foreign ownership discourage Middle Eastern investors from investing in Mindanao.
(Here we go again! And this is not even supported by empirical evidence. There are dozens of mega-corporations in the US, the UK and Germany – and no doubt elsewhere - in which Middle Eastern investors have invested hundreds of billions of their petrodollars without insisting on 100% ownership.
(Nograles is just sucking up to the GMA Forever bandwagon, like Gov. Joey Salceda, like Sen. Nene Pimentel, like thousands of congressmen, governors, vice-governors, mayors and vice-mayors, who are being enticed with additional years in power without need for re-election, if they will only dance the ChaCha.
(Nograles’ additional rationale that Middle East-financed infrastructure would be spared attacks by Muslim rebels is also not supported by empirical evidence. There have been hundreds of cases of oil pipelines, oil refineries, hotels, civil works, entire apartment blocs, even mosques, being blown up by fellow Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Somalia, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, etc as Sunnis battle Shias, and secular Muslim governments fight off fundamentalist Muslim rebels. Nograles should read more foreign news.)
To get back to the stalled peace process, any resumption of these talks should not be held in Malaysia as Malaysia has a vested interest in the dismemberment of the Philippines. Malaysia has not forgotten and will never forget that President Ferdinand Marcos tried to launch an invasion to grab Sabah or North Borneo from the Malaysian Federation in the 1970s. For the Malaysians, the dismemberment of the Philippine Republic would be the sweetest revenge for such a hostile and unfriendly act.
If we must talk with Bangsamoro rebels abroad, let the venue be in Indonesia. Indonesia has its own problems with separatist movements (East Timor, Aceh, Irian Jaya, etc) and would not be hospitable to separatist movements in other, neighboring countries.
And finally, there is the matter of ancestral domain. Who has rightful claims to ancestral domains? Muslim settlers from what are now Indonesia and Malaysia did not come to these shores until the 14th century. Before them, these islands were populated for centuries by animist tribes whose descendants are the present-day lumads and other mountain tribes like the Aetas.
It is the descendants of the animist tribes who can rightfully claim ancestral domains, like the aborigines in Australia, the Inuits or Eskimos in Canada and Alaska, and the various Indian nations who were dispossessed of their ancestral land when settlers from Europe came to North America starting in the 16th century.
In the case of Mindanao, the early Muslim settlers had grabbed the ancestral lands of the lumads, and their descendants in turn were dispossessed of these lands by successive waves of Christian settlers from Luzon and Visayas.
How to untangle this web is a Herculean task. But it has to be attempted, but without giving away the family jewels. Peace in Mindanao or Mindanao in pieces!. *****.
Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in acabaya.blogspot,com. Tony on YouTube in www.tapatt.org..
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