COMMENT: IV. BEL: Roadmap and Roadblocks (1)

Let us restate the steps in the published implementation process: 1^st: convergence; 2^nd: crafting the BEL; 3^rd: enacting the BEL; 4^th: ratification of the BEL; 5^th: Bangsamoro transition; 6^th: Bangsamoro entrenched upon the election of its regular officials in 2019. Each step has a timeline, the preceding a prerequisite of the succeeding. Each step has to be done on time in order to inaugurate the Bangsamoro after the 2019 election.

Convergence and Crafting

Ideally, convergence must be done first to make the crafting of BEL without unnecessary complication. But this will take time. It may be imperative to do the first and the second simultaneously with the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) steering the process. This scenario presumes the FPA, etc. will be converged to the CAB and the BTC will only enhance Draft BBL into BEL through convergence – article by article following Draft BBL.

This scenario will be the fastest and most suitable to the July 2017 must-timeline for the submission of the BEL to the Congress – six months starting January 2017. Yet, this is far from snag-free. The members of new BTC created on November 7, 2016 are still to be appointed. Can the BTC start the drafting in December?

Convergence will mostly involve the CAB, FPA and R.A. No. 9054. MILF Panel Chair Mohagher Iqbal said this about the FPA (Final Peace Agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front) and the CAB in his opening statement at the 40^th GPH-MILF Exploratory Talks in Kuala Lumpur, September 10-15, 2012: “The best of what is in the GRP-MNLF FPA are already subsumed or entrenched even in the GPH-MILF Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB). Many more will be captured or fleshed out once the MILF and GPH sign the Comprehensive Agreement …”

That the FPA and R.A. No. 9054 are already virtually converged to the CAB can be easily verified in the Draft BBL. As we have discussed earlier, the 1976 Tripoli Agreement had been fleshed out more comprehensively in the CAB than in the FPA. Will Misuari and the other MNLF leaders agree?

If all parties will defer to the CAB and to the BTC to steer the convergence process using Draft BBL as the mold – crafting while converging – the BEL can most probably be in the Congress by July 2017 IF the process can start at the latest in January. Will MNLF, the IPs, the Sultanates, Moro traditional and LGU leaders agree?

The Rest of the Way

With the BEL in the Congress by July 2017, the burden of meeting the 2019 timeline to entrench the Bangsamoro will shift to the leadership in the Senate and the House and to President Duterte. If they can treat BEL as a special legislation, subject to inter-branch courtesy – being a Government-MILF agreed political settlement of the Moro Problem or Question – the organic law can be signed by the President and ratified by July 2018. That will allow the BTA one year to prepare the Bangsamoro for entrenchment in 2019.

The Bangsamoro could have been inaugurated last June 30 or earlier. But the leaders of the Congress and President Aquino III lacked the political will to back up their repeated assurances to pass the BBL.[]