DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 23 Oct) – Former president Fidel V. Ramos said the proceedings of the draft of the law creating the Bangsamoro, which is being deliberated in Congress and certified urgent by President Benigno S. Aquino, should also revisit the points of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement.
“The agreement that they are drafting should be inclusive and cover everybody, including the lumads,” Ramos said in an interview at the opening of the BIMP-EAGA IMT-GT Trade Fair and Business Leaders Conference at the SMX Convention Center here.
Ramos said even members of his own family, who were not involved in politics, are all hoping that the Bangsamoro Basic Law would lead to the final peace agreement.
He said that if the agreement would only center on a certain group, the other groups would not survive.
“If you can swim in the ocean alone, that is fine,” Ramos said.
“But what about the baby left in the water?
It would drown,” he added.
Meanwhile, at a road show of the consultations for House Bill 4994 in Cotabato City, representatives from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao reaffirmed their support for the bill.
In a statement sent to MindaNews, ARMM executive secretary Laisa Alamia said the ARMM trusts that the bill’s provisions are “implementable, feasible, and … directed for the good of the people.”
Alamia said the new structure is only as good as the people who are in the new form of government.
“We are anticipating a better system with competent and committed people to administer the new entity,” she said, adding they support the passage of the law and have been hard at work to ensure a smooth transition to the political entity that will follow ARMM.
She said the leaders who will come after them will benefit from the gains of the reforms that have been undertaken by the working government of ARMM.
The BBL will give way to the establishment of a new autonomous political entity, the Bangsamoro government, to replace the ARMM.
