COTABATO CITY (MindaNews / 5 March) – The euphoria for the GPH-MILF (Government-Moro Islamic Liberation Front) agreements (Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro and Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro) was a short-lived advantage to get a chance to pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL). According to standard of conflict resolution, we have not steered away from two tracks: political violence and modality of achieving political ends.
No legislative currency is achieved for now to enact BBL in a derogative form. In the aftermath of that bloody Sunday (January 25, Mamasapano), no closure of a political route is in sight, but it has created a public space for the political project in which something else than BBL is vetted into play. As things currently stand, old bogeyman Moro is resurrected as arena of political clans and metro-centric authorities fight their intramurals in the primacy of politics and largesse.
Public responses reinforce the fault-line of conflict so that “double-speak” rather seems like a sort of Orwellian spell — we are for peace but with so many conditionality. A language of distrust (hate?) with overarching anti-BBL themes has likewise stoked fears about MILF. TV-Radio anchors who maintain it routinely, plug similar montage. Whereas I must deliberately use vocabulary of terms familiar to conflict-resolution negotiators opposite insurrectional popular and immediate politics.
What is next expected for BBL is to enter into new commitments of partnership as the staging post for phased-steps toward transitional arrangement.
Congressional legislation and administrative action are centrally biased towards a presidential unitary system. We can assess the outcome of the “talk process” judging its potential to entrench Bangsamoro right to self-determination. Against a backdrop of historical injustice, an “irreformable” constitution is not what MILF’s long armed struggle fought for to achieve full devolution. This issue was perfect for the peace panel. It is about the charter’s imperfection that MILF interlocutors engaged in to deconstruct the status quo. Writing the people of “Bangsamoro” status in asymmetric structurally crafted framework is not repugnant to any constitutional contemporary republican ideology.
We are embarking on a new departure from radical politics.[]
Hon. Marcos and Hon. Rodriguez pick your battles for peace for bipartisan support. Lawmakers must not confuse the Truth about accountability with Trust in pursuit of ‘a new beginning’ for policing in Bangsamoro with police service capable of attracting support from the local community.
Managing congressional politics around passing the BBL in June is feasible, but with no assurance of conforming to the peace pacts. On what basis then do we realistically draw lines between the pro-BBL constitutional fold and schismatic anti-BBL radical fronts, skeptics or critics? Opponent accounts that Hon. Cayetano and Hon. Lobregat claim obscure the truth and erode trust being selective with the facts.
The Aquino administration’s “criminalization-pronged” modality is bound to produce ambiguous results to meet or reverse political violence toward the end state. DOJ Secretary De Lima takes the procedural steps for the two-pronged approaches to Government-MILF peace process. Once complaints lead to mass arrests, it can conflate unbridgeable gaps in the “normalization-pronged” modality to which the parties have signed up in the Annexes to FAB and CAB and BBL.
For MILF ordinary perspective, this first prong translates to criminal prosecution for ‘prison victimhood’. Talking peace to the MILF was not having any effect in the ground because of common apprehension that the Criminal Investigation Detection Group (CIDG) pattern of ‘unwarranted arrests’ (with renewed order of battle lists) would repeat itself.
The MILF Central Committee response to secure peace was a “normalization” process with a phased decommissioning. The second prong means nuanced gesture of putting arsenal of ‘weapons behind use’ to end political violence. As in earlier phases of GRP-MNLF peace initiative, GPH-MILF thematic agenda to disarm, demobilize, reintegrate (DDR) is predictably a tense task. Because DDR is ineffectual tool for demobilization, there is risk of derailing the components of normalization laboriously constructed as a substantive part of FAB and CAB. Chairman Al haj Murad said in a TV interview no decommissioning can take place without BBL.
So if OPAPP (Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process) keeps too close focus on decommissioning and security-related questions, it does not create political confidence. And so, what concerns the BIAF (Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces) command posts was about the counterinsurgency side of politics via normalization process with no clear leverage for United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), the political self of MILF. While en route into navigating the parliamentary roadblocks for UBJP, there is a vacillating response from the ulama ranks. There is speculation that MILF volunteers could just be trapped into non-participatory basis in the 2016 electoral process.[]