BARRING no last-minute hitches, Mindanao is all set to hold its plebiscite for the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), with defense, military and police officials expecting that the political exercise would go smoothly, if not peacefully, given the elaborate security preparations they have laid out.
Ensuring that the plebiscite will take place the way the government has planned, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Benjamin Madrigal and other top military officials flew to Mindanao as early as Thursday to personally check whether the mapped out security, in coordination with local law-enforcement agencies, has been put in place.
Madrigal and the other officials will remain in the region for two days doing the rounds in the cities and provinces that will be taking part in the plebiscite.
Acting Commission on Elections Chairman Sheriff Abas, who met last week with Madrigal and Philippine National Police chief Director General Oscar Albayalde, said that regardless of the outcome, they have to ensure that the voting will take place.
However, days before the voting, some local officials in the areas that were proposed to be covered by the organic law are still against the “expanded autonomy” in Mindanao, prompting government officials to do last-minute pitching.
Scope of exercise
The plebiscite will be conducted in two phases. The first one is on Monday, January 21, for the current areas under the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM); and the second phase on February 6 for the areas in North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte, which are not under the ARMM but with a predominantly Moro population.
The proponents—the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) now joined and with the full support and backing of the former mainstream Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), Malacañang and the ARMM administration—have harped on the same message, i.e., that this would correct the historical injustice and neglect of the Bangsamoro, or what they refer to as the Moro nation.
The Bangsamoro is composed of several tribes, mostly professing the Islamic faith, from the Jama Mapun, Yakans, Samas and Tausugs of the southwestern island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, to the Maguindanaos and Iranuns of Maguindanao and Central Mindanao, and Maranaos of the two Lanao provinces.
Some other tribes are scattered elsewhere, such as the Dibabawons and Kalagans of Davao del Norte, the Sangils of Sarangani and South Cotabato, and the Molbogs and Palawani of Palawan. It also includes the non-Muslim seafaring Badjao tribe.
The opposition also includes some local government officials, one of whom is Sulu Gov. Abdusakor Tan II, who filed a petition before the Supreme Court to stop the implementation of Republic Act 11054, the Organic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). The BARMM would replace the current ARMM and the plebiscite would determine how much bigger a territory than the ARMM would belong to the BARRM.
How the people would respond is now a serious guessing game. While many outside Mindanao see Mindanao as insignificant—and sometimes a “sore” point in the national reputation for its longtime, undeserved association with conflict—the nation’s leaders, past and present, will attest that any unsettling, often hostile, event in this southern Philippine island is a big throbbing pain in the entire body politic.
Cost of war
A government leader, who was the with the peace process, warned that an episode of war in Mindanao would cost the government some P70 billion, roughly about a tenth of the nation’s budget back then. It covered mainly for the cost of the war materiel.
It did not include yet the financial and social cost of maintaining evacuation camps and taking care of several thousands of evacuees, whose number at one point in 2005 reached almost a million and placed the Philippines in the uneasy top spot in the world ranking of countries with the most number of evacuees, displacing Darfur, Sudan, then the most-troubled spot in the world.
Back home, the many series of negotiations going back to the late 1970s and early 1980s with the MNLF, then the mainstream Moro revolutionary organization, has not lightly pacified the Moro population beyond the establishment of a regional government for them, the creation of the Southern Philippines Development Authority and the “pampering” of the traditional Moro politicians.
By then, the group of the late Salamat Hashim broke away from the MNLF in 1981 and formed the now MILF, along a more religious line, and soon became the main revolutionary group after the MNLF entered into a peace pact with the government in September 1996. Earlier, the Abu Sayyaf emerged in the southern backdoor, whose members were believed to be the younger generation of fighters, many of them the sons and daughters of MNLF fighters and leaders who opted for a more extreme position after being dismayed by the more conciliatory position of their elders when they agreed to peace negotiations.
The same indignant attitude could be later seen among the young generation in one MILF general assembly a decade ago in Maguindanao, where a group of youngsters shouted for continuing the war against the government.
It is against this backdrop that BOL proponents, including President Duterte, have appealed for wider support for the acceptance of the BOL, rather than precipitating the situation in Mindanao, into an extremist line, citing the case of the five-month battle to retake Marawi City in 2017. Aside from that bloody siege by Islamic State-inspired homegrown terrorists, there was also the reported declaration of allegiance to the Middle East terror group by the Abu Sayyaf, the breakaway MILF faction, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and some smaller armed groups.
Abuse, optimism
However, another local government official, Cotabato City Mayor Cynthia Guiani, complained that it was this “cryptic position” among government proponents that turned the campaign into a pressure tactic on local governments. She has been quoted several times as saying that some government campaigners have committed abuses in pressuring them into conceding in favor of the BOL.
Saying that Cotabato City could continue its operation even without the supposed bigger budget for the BARMM, Guiani has openly expressed her opposition to the inclusion of her city in the BARMM. Cotabato City, along with Isabela City of Basilan, is not part of the ARMM but these two cities are included in the areas of plebiscite on Monday.
The Philippine Constitutional Association (Philconsa) has also filed a petition separate from that of Tan, asking the High Tribunal to stop its implementation over some conflict with constitutional provisions.
Mujiv Hataman, who will exit as the last governor of the ARMM, has argued that the organic law has passed scrutiny of several august bodies, including Congress. The Senate and the House of Representatives were named respondents in the petition of Tan and the Philconsa.
The Supreme Court has allowed the holding of the January 21 plebiscite and would likely hold in February the hearings on the petitioners’ plea to issue a restraining order.
Story in the numbers
Meanwhile, private and civic organizations that have worked during the decades of the peace process told the BusinessMirror of the numbers indicating a widespread support for the BOL.
In the home province of Tan, for example, the informant said that their actual visit had elicited a promise of support and vote for the BOL from at least the other five but bigger and old-time political families. The clan of the mayor of Isabela City, who continued to oppose inclusion to the ARMM and the BARMM, has already agreed to vote yes, and, it is said, the mayor may concede her position.
The source said MNLF Chairman Nur Misuari has kept his silence, although his council of leaders had vouched for the MNLF support. The source said Misuari would wait for the outcome of President Duterte’s promise to him. The source added that the President had sent a message to Misuari that they would talk again after the plebiscite. But the source said, “We don’t know the details of what the two leaders have talked [about] before.”
Incumbent government officials and political leaders in Tawi-Tawi have also promised proponents that they would vote favorably, as with the leaders in Lanao del Sur. “Nary a whimper or an inkling of a ‘no’ can you ever hear in Lanao del Sur,” the source added.
While ground zero for the showdown would be Cotabato City, the source said that both the rival scions among the Mangudadatu clan have agreed to support the BOL, and the incumbent leaders among the Ampatuan clan have said they have favorably campaigned and would vote yes to it.
The Mangudadatus and the Ampatuans lord it over Maguindanao province.
Meanwhile, the provincial leaders in North Cotabato have publicly called on the towns of North Cotabato with dominant Moro population to vote yes to the BOL. This week, MILF Chairman Murad Ebrahim and the new chief of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process visited them as they attended a general assembly for the areas where the plebiscite would also be held.
Duterte was also scheduled for a visit and campaign in Cotabato before the homestretch to the Monday’s plebiscite. Malacañang has said the President would be a “great influencer” in the turnout of the plebiscite.
But it would be the Bangsamoro voice, however, which would ultimately lend credence to the claim.
Image credits: Hugo Maes | Dreamstime.com, AP/Aaron Favila, AP/Bullit Marquez