DAVAO CITY—Bangsamoro leaders and several networks of peace advocates are knocking on the doors of Malacañang and Congress to grant them a little more time to galvanize the gains they have achieved in less than three years, stressing the time frame given them to do their job is “too constricting” compared to other nations who accomplished similar feats in more than 10 years.
At least one academe-based peace group, the Al-Qalam Institute at the Ateneo de Davao University, said a final evaluation for an exit agreement was unlikely to happen at the end of the transition in 2022 because of the bureaucratic delays on the part of the national government and the one-year lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
While the Bangsamoro (literally, Moro nation) revolutionary-turned-autonomous regional government leaders and peace advocates won’t say it yet, the peace process in Mindanao will be placed again in a rather perilous situation without an extended term for the transition process.
Mary Ann Arnado, executive director of the Mindanao People’s Caucus, said the call for extension has become more necessary and for all the valid reasons to allow a little bit more time for the new Bangsamoro autonomous region to demonstrate to its combat constituents and all Filipino Muslims that its move was entirely correct to sit down with the government for a final peace settlement in Mindanao.
The current Bangsamoro region has granted autonomous governance to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) as part of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, which was the final peace agreement, signed in 2014. It would take four more years, in September 2018, for Congress to ratify the Bangsamoro Organic Law, to officially start the transition process.
The previous Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) was originally granted to the first Moro revolutionary organization, the Nur Misuari-led Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), but the Moro leader griped years later that the national government has not complied with its promises under the 1996 Final Peace Agreement.
Transition
EXTENDING the transition for even another three years may still be short, but may at least give enough breathing space to continue what Bangsamoro leaders and peace advocates have started as part of the “gargantuan” tasks of the normalization process, foremost of which is the decommissioning of the 40,000 armed fighters and ancillary units of the MILF, and the crafting of the Parliamentary form of autonomous government.
Either one of these may take decades to firm up, even as the national government could not even take off with its planned charter amendments by any administration, BARMM leaders would say.
“Just imagine, 17 long years of negotiation, can we implement what has been in the law for just three years?” pointed out Mohagher Iqbal, who was the MILF chief negotiator and currently minister of education of BARMM.
He said the MILF was originally pushing for a six-year transition but accepted nonetheless the three-year transition, which the MILF described as too short. “Pag hindi ho tayo ma-extend, hilaw po ang implementation ng normalization process [If we don’t extend, the implementation of the normalization process will be half-baked],” he said.
“Of course, this is not a blame game. [We are not blaming the government], neither are we blaming the MILF. Because we are already partners, not just in the implementation of the Bangsamoro Organic Law but even in the implementation of the agreement between the government and the MILF,” he emphasized.
Iqbal made the comment last year after the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) passed Resolution 332 urging the House of Representatives and the Senate of the Philippines to extend the Bangsamoro transition period from year 2022 to 2025, to provide the BTA with sufficient time to complete its mandate.
This resolution followed the statement of MILF Chairman and current Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod Murad Ebrahim that “in the normalization, there [is] much to be sought.”
“We have two tracks of challenge in the peace process: the governance track and the normalization track,” Ebrahim said. “The first track would be the governance aspect—this is erecting the Bangsamoro government, organizing the BARMM. There is that other track that is more comprehensive, the normalization track.”
“In normalization, there is the decommissioning of the BIAF [Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces], dismantling of private armies, establishing the police force for the region. There is rehabilitation of combatants after they are decommissioned, including amnesty. Much is involved and tied up in normalization,” Ebrahim pointed out.
He anticipated that the normalization process would be placed on the backburner once more with the holding of the forthcoming 2022 national and local elections. “That would be a problem,” Ebrahim said.
For example, the initially decommissioned 12,000 BIAF combatants have yet to receive the P1-million economic package for each that the national government had promised in exchange for their return to civilian life, he said. “That’s the challenge, how to convince the other combatants who are now saying that nothing has happened. They are now saying, why should we submit to decommissioning?”
Ebrahim added: “That’s why, when at the end of the transition, everything in the normalization process should have been implemented to coincide with the terms of the transition.”
The League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) chapter in Tawi-Tawi, Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Tawi-Tawi, and Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Maguindanao have all supported the resolution while passing their separate calls for extension, Iqbal continued.
Peace in peril?
IN the thick of the government-MILF negotiation, Misuari surfaced to demand compliance from Malacañang with the latter’s alleged failed promises in their separate peace agreement in 1996. Misuari said the government failed in its mini-Marshall plan to pour economic and financial assistance to remove the ARMM from the notorious tag of being the poorest region in the country. The powerful 56-nation pan-Arabic Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) has also asked the government to look into the gripes of the MNLF. The OIC has been a facilitator and mediator in the government-MNLF peace negotiation.
In the case of the MILF, a failed decommissioning of its combatants alone may bear serious consequences to peace.
In a gathering of MILF fighters in Darapanan in 2008 to discuss the peace process it was entering with government, a unit of young fighters in formation were visibly impassioned to continue fighting than remain with the peace negotiations.
It must also be recalled that it was the younger generation of Moro fighters who formed their own groups to manifest their dismay with their fathers who entered into a peace agreement, and who later expressed their disappointment over the government’s perceived failure to comply with the provisions of the peace agreement.
This was seen in the formation of the Abu Sayyaf Group when Misuari agreed to a peace settlement in 1996; of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters when the Supreme Court thumbed down in 2008 the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain; and of the Maute Group, which opted to tread the path of terrorism and laid siege to Marawi City for five months in 2017.
Far from over
IF the transition is ended by next year over the objections of concerned parties, there would be no exit agreement to be signed that would show the complied terms of the peace agreement with the MILF, said Kenny Lloyd Angon, deputy executive director of the Al-Qalam Institute. The exit agreement is a final document showing that a program, or agreement, has been fully implemented and complied with.
But currently, the process is still far from full compliance and implementation, he said, citing reports of widespread delays caused by the realities of the peace process, a situation further aggravated by the now year-long Covid-19 pandemic.
“We cannot sign an exit agreement with this, where the needed processes in the transition and access to government services in the BARMM have been stopped by the pandemic,” Angon said.
He added the peace process alone had been a painstaking process at implementing policies and trying to persuade both policy makers, traditional politicians and the communities to accept the new terms under the peace agreement.
“This alone has been taking up much time and delaying timetables that make it impossible to comply with and finish all that have been agreed on the negotiation table by 2021,” Angon told a media briefing at the Waterfront Insular Hotel Davao, where representatives of Bangsamoro organizations gathered to plan the campaign to persuade the national government to agree to extend the transition period by another three years.
He said schools like the Ateneo de Davao University would likely come up with statements supporting calls for the extension of the Bangsamoro transition.
Add the delaying factor related to the restrictions of the pandemic, which is likely to go beyond one year in containing the infection even with the introduction of the vaccine in the first quarter.
“For example, the transition period would need a lot of movement of personnel and services, but the restrictions in travel already hindered it. It’s stopping the access to the processes of the transition and government services,” Angon noted.
In countries that underwent peace processes, it took them between five and years for the transition, he pointed out.
Under the government-MILF peace agreement, a transition has been mandated to allow the smooth transfer of governance—from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to the BARMM. The transition should allow the gradual phasing in of new government rules and regulations to govern and manage an autonomous region for Filipino Muslims in the South.
“By 2025, if the extension would be granted, we should already expect the full decommissioning of the 40,000 armed fighters of the MILF, and the full transition of the MILF camps into civilian communities. This would allow the smooth transition also of the way of life for the former combatants to adapt to the new ways of civilian life,” Arnado said.
“We would be seeing the full dividends of the peace process being enjoyed by the victims of the war, through the funds and services to the communities, from availability of water and food facilities, to schools and infrastructure that have been long denied to these former battlegrounds and neglected villages,” she added.
The fruit of the full dividends of the peace process “would be the peace in the communities themselves where this is absent during those years of conflict,” the MPC official added.
Arnado is hopeful the bill filed in Congress by veteran lawmakers would be fully appreciated by the rest of Congress.
In December last year, lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, spokesman of BARMM, said the national government and the Bangsamoro government were distracted in implementing their respective commitments to the normalization and mandates to the transition due to the Covid-19.
Sinarimbo, who is also the minister of the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government (MILG), said, “Pati sa atin po medyo na disturb ’yung focus natin doon sa pagpapatibay ng institusyon ng awtonomiya ng Bangsamoro government, and then ’yung paglalatag ng mga programa na maramdaman ng mga kababayan natin sa baba [Our focus on institution building for the Bangsamoro government and implementation of programs in the grassroot communities was somehow disturbed].”
He said Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., who heads the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Opapp), has acknowledged the delays in the normalization track in the peace agreement between the government of the Republic of the Philippines (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Sinarimbo said some of the national government’s obligations to the normalization were not fulfilled, and was taking more time to be completely implemented. These include the delay in the decommissioning process of former combatants of the MILF and transforming the six MILF camps into civilian use, the organizing of Joint Peace and Security Teams and the turnover of the so-called “opt-in territories.”
“The bureaucracy moves in a way that is not as fast as our desire,” Sinarimbo said, partly in Filipino, as she noted that the obligations of the national government “cannot be fulfilled in the three-year transition term of 2019 until 2022.”
On the part of the Bangsamoro, the lawyer said the 80-member Bangsamoro Transition Authority Parliament was mandated to enact six priority codes to strengthen the regional autonomous government. But “as of the moment, the Administrative Code has been approved and the five others are still either under deliberations, and consultations with stakeholders and experts.”
Sessions of the Parliament were cancelled many times due to the threats of Covid-19, resulting in even slower steps in creating the priority legislations, he added.
The other priority codes that need to be passed during the transition period include Bangsamoro Education Code, Bangsamoro Electoral Code, Local Government Code, Civil Service Code, and Revenue Code.
Certify as urgent
“WE have to educate the people, especially in the discussion on how to elect people in the Parliamentary form of government. This needs time, for this alone,” said the League of Bangsamoro Organizations, which attended the Multi-Stakeholders Consultation on the Bangsamoro Transition Period held on February 5, 2021, in Davao City.
Other consultations were being held this quarter in Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte, Maguindanao, Basilan and Sulu.
Senator Aquilino Pimentel III has filed Senate Bill 0219 and Sen. Richard Gordon filed Bill 2025 seeking the extension of the transition, and these bills are being discussed at the committee on local government. Meanwhile, House bills 8116, 8117, 8161 and 8277 are being tackled by the House committees on suffrage and electoral reforms, on Muslim affairs, and peace and reconciliation.
Arnado has called on President Duterte to certify as urgent the bills pending in both Senate and the House of Representatives before Congress goes on recess on June 4.
“He has a huge and historic role here to ensure that what he envisioned for a peaceful Mindanao would see fruition to the end,” she added, citing the President’s interjection into the peace process that led to the fast pace in the implementation of the agreement during his term.
Image credits: Hugo Maes | Dreamstime.com, AP/Bullit Marquez , File photo by Manuel Cayon