By all accounts, one strength of the President is also one of her main weaknesses: when a problem arises, she focuses on that problem with such utter concentration, regardless if her inattention to everything else causes future problems. Food and fuel problems led her to set aside Mindanao until she noticed that things were headed toward a crisis situation. She then seems to have compensated for her previous inattention by rushing a deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in time for her to announce it at her State of the Nation Address.Such is the controversial nature of the deal that draft versions of it have been leaked to the media. While Zamboanga, Iligan and North Cotabato in Mindanao have threatened to go to the Supreme Court to delay the deal, it seems the administration will sign an agreement with the MILF as scheduled. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but for now, the main points have been identified in media reports. It is these points – the proposed “Bangsamoro Juridical Entity,” the expansion of the current Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the recognition of the historic territories of the old Moro Sultanates as the ancestral domain of Muslim Filipinos, and the possibility, even probability, of a Congress amending the Constitution by means of a Constituent Assembly – that have been the focus of public commentary. The debate will surely be ferocious, based less on positive hopes for the future and more on ancient animosities based on religion and even tribal rivalries. It will be made even more acrimonious by the public wondering if it wasn’t made possible by oppositionists providing the opportunity for Charter Change by means of proposing federalism, while wondering, too, if peace can even be achieved at the cost of going parliamentary and extending the President and her ruling coalition’s hold on power. Even those deeply involved in the peace process will be asking if it was wise for the President to have made such sweeping concessions to the MILF. Even if the agreement moves forward but ends up derailed either at the congressional level or in a plebiscite, we should consider the possibility that the government has already made it possible for the MILF to secure one of its most crucial objectives: legitimization abroad. The MILF will be able to tell the Muslim world that it has what up to now only the much-diminished Moro National Liberation Front could claim to possess: a formal agreement with the Philippine government. The proposed agreement, after all, says the MILF will gain its much-sought-after observer status in the Organization of Islamic Conference; and that, in itself, confers such prestige and access to official Islamic channels as to make the whole agreement, even if it fails, an MILF achievement. The agreement, too, establishes a precedent, requiring all future administrations to meet its provisions as the minimum basis for future peace talks. – Manuel Quezon III, Inquirer |
