DAVAO CITY—President Arroyo on Friday officially certified the bill creating a Mindanao Economic Development Authority (Meda) to ensure the island-wide planning and coordination of projects.

Jesus Dureza, presidential adviser on Mindanao affairs, said Mrs. Arroyo announced this in a private meeting with members of the Mindanao bloc of representatives and senators, Christian bishops, Muslim ulama and business and political supporters, after the President attended the quarterly meeting of the Bishops-Ulama Conference (BUC) at the Waterfront Insular Hotel Davao.

Dureza disclosed this during the regular Friday press conference at the government-run Philippine Information Agency.

Sources close to Dureza told BusinessMirror that Mrs. Arroyo announced she was certifying the bill after Archbishop Fernando Capalla showed her a letter he wrote to the President dated October 28.

“This is what triggers my decision to certify that bill,” Mrs. Arroyo reportedly announced in the private meeting, the source said.

In his three-paragraph letter, Capalla said, “The Bishops-Ulama Conference is definitely supporting and endorsing the passage into law of the Mindanao development [Minda] bill presently pending in the House of Representatives.”

“Our conference, whose members are all from Mindanao and are among the major stakeholders of the region, believes that, if approved, the new law would provide for the creation of an ‘agency that integrates Mindanao’s agenda and effectively articulates these agenda to national government priorities.’ Our primary concern is peace,” he said.

Capalla earlier lauded Mrs. Arroyo in the BUC quarterly meeting for not signing in August 2008 in Kuala Lumpur the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD). 

The public disclosure of the MOA-AD’s content last year prompted local government leaders to organize rallies against the peace negotiations and triggered bloody Moro guerrilla attacks against military and civilian targets in several towns in Lanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao and Sarangani.

The BUC meeting presented to Mrs. Arroyo the result of the subsequent Mindanao consultations on peace that the group undertook, which the President accepted.

Mrs. Arroyo also told the private meeting that the Meda bill was actually “her pet project then.”

 “She said it was her major proposal when she was then senator, only that it was shelved,” Dureza said.

The President’s certifying the bill strengthened the position of many government, political, business and civil-society leaders in calling for a permanent socioeconomic- planning body. The Mindanao Economic Development Council (Medco) is currently assuming the role of coordinating and monitoring island-wide development projects, but nongovernment leaders argued that the Medco is periodically threatened with differing development perspectives of each administration in Malacañang.

Early this year, former President Fidel Ramos recommended the creation of a permanent body to oversee peace and development projects in Mindanao.

 It was under the term of Ramos when the Medco was established to assist, among other functions, the Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines-East Asean Growth Area (BIMP-Eaga), which was created in 1994. Aside from being the government’s socioeconomic-planning unit in Mindanao, the Medco was also designated as the Philippine secretariat in the economic cooperation.

The Senate subcommittee on economic affairs, headed by Sen. Edgardo Angara, would take up the proposed bill in its first public hearing today.

Members of the subcommittee, sponsors of the bill and key Mindanao leaders are expected to deliberate on the bill in relation to its importance to peace and development in Mindanao.

The Meda bill would push for the creation of a permanent Mindanao body “that will integrate and harmonize all peace-and-development efforts in Mindanao. It is also being pushed in view of the need for Mindanao to catch up with the mainstream national development,” the Medco said in a statement.

Congress is hearing two versions of the bill, the Mindanao Economic Development Authority (Meda) bill and the Mindanao Development Administration (MinDA) bill.

The bills have been filed at the committee on economic affairs, headed by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, although Angara’s subcommittee was assigned to discuss the bills after the subcommittee was created in August.

The two versions of the bill, and the separate bills supporting them, included the recent MinDA bill filed by Sen. Mar Roxas in June this year, and Sen. Loren Legarda’s counterpart bill in early September that backed the Meda bill.

They joined nine other senators who filed or sponsored the bills. They were Sens. Defensor-Santiago and Juan Miguel Zubiri, who filed their bills in December last year; Manny Villar, who filed his bill in February; Angara, Richard Gordon, Lito Lapid, Jinggoy Ejercito-Estrada and Ramon Revilla, who filed their bills in May this year.

In her bill, Legarda said in her explanatory note that “Mindanao’s unique socioeconomic and peace issues call for an agency that goes beyond regional paradigm to spearhead and integrate peace-and-development efforts at a Mindanao-wide perspective.”

Medco said that, so far, Mindanao “continues to lag behind in terms of economic growth, poverty and human development.”

Six out of the 10 poorest provinces of the country were in Mindanao, while four of the five provinces that ranked lowest in human development were also located in Mindanao.

“Compared with Luzon and Visayas, Mindanao has the highest percentage of unpaved national roads at 37.81 percent; the lowest in irrigation development at 31.5 percent and the least in terms of farm-to-market roads paved at 19.68 percent,” the Medco said.

Legarda said that while Medco has been doing planning and development work for the past 16 years, “there is a need to strengthen it and make it more permanent through the creation of the Meda, allowing for the prioritization of this development agenda.”

Medco said the bill was awaiting the final report of the joint House committees on Mindanao Affairs and on Government Enterprises and Privatization, which approved the Meda. Their report would be grilled in a plenary discussion that Congress would schedule.