CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—Tulay Kalinaw Mindanaw (Tulay KaMi, or Bridge of Peace in Mindanao) leaders and other civil-society organizations in Mindanao are urging congressmen, especially Centrist Democratic Party Rep. Rufus Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro, to “extend some more liberality” in interpreting the proposed Bangsamoro basic law (BBL), and not be shackled by legalities.
This, after Rodriguez, chairman of the Adhoc Committee on the BBL, said that eight out of the 250 provisions in the BBL should be deleted, because these are unconstitutional.
“We will remove these provisions so as to strengthen the BBL, so that when it is questioned before the Supreme Court, it will not be declared unconstitutional, like what happened with the MOA-AD [memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain] in 2008,” he said.
Rodriguez said that, during the April 11 “peace conversation” he had with Tulay KaMi and representatives of other organizations, the Church, academe and other sectors, no less than legal luminaries, like former Supreme Court Justice Vicente Mendoza, the deans of the Colleges of Law of the University of the Philippines and San Sebastian College, the Philippine Bar Association, all governors of the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and the Speaker and members of the Assembly of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, were all one in saying that these eight provisions are unconstitutional.
Some of these provisions are those that will create the Bangsamoro versions of the Commission on Audit, Commission on Elections, Ombudsman, Civil Service Commission and the Commission on Human Rights.
He said the 1987 Constitution mandated that these commissions are “constitutional bodies” that even Congress, the Supreme Court (SC) or even the Office of the President cannot touch.
Thus, if those pushing for BBL’s passage want that it will not be declared unconstitutional by the SC, they should agree to the removal of these provisions. Removing these provisions from the BBL will not water it down but will, in fact, strengthen it, he added. But Bibing Mordeno, executive director of Balay Mindanaw Foundation Inc., which serves as secretariat of Tulay KaMi, asked for more liberality in the interpretation of these provisions, since it said in the BBL that the Bangsamoro versions of these “constitutional commissions” are still under the supervision of their national counterparts and not separate bodies. “It is our moral obligation to journey with the Bangsamoro in the implementation of the BBL. We believe that this is it,” she said.
A representative of the Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society also pointed out that the BBL is already the “minimum compromise entered into by both peace panels” to implement the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro and, as such, should be passed untouched. “It is already the minimum of what the Bangsamoro people have been fighting for. Deleting these provisions might make the BBL—like other laws—very much lacking in terms of solving the root of the conflict and showing respect to the Moro,” he said.
A pastor of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines said that these eight provisions are part of what the Bangsamoro, particularly the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, is fighting for at present—the right to be trusted. “These eight provisions are the essence of the right to be trusted,” he said.
For his part, Tulay KaMi lead convener Archbishop Antonio J. Ledesma of Davao said these provisions “can be interpreted in a different way.”
“In the present BBL, there is also that respect for the constitutional bodies and, in fact, there is a middle ground,” he said.
Ledesma also pointed out that even the surviving framers of the Constitution said “they have not seen anything objectionable to the BBL and it adheres to the core spirit of the Constitution, which is social justice.”
Image credits: Bong D. Fabe