Year 2012 will be remembered as the time when the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) agreed to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with a new self-governing entity, being a “failed experiment,” as far as President Benigno Aquino III is concerned.
The ARMM’s creation was a brainchild of Aquino's matriarch, former
President Corazon Aquino, as part of her administration’s initial peace overture
with the MILF, which resulted in the crafting of the September 2, 1996
government-MNLF final peace agreement, during the time of then President Fidel
Ramos. It was Mrs. Aquino, in fact, who created the Regional Consultative
Commission or RCC that drafted the ARMM’s first ever charter, Republic Act 6743,
which was ratified through a plebiscite in 1990, resulting into the fusion of
Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi together as territory of the
autonomous region. The ARMM's area was expanded, which eventually included the island province
of Basilan and the cities of Lamitan and Marawi, with the ratification of its
amended charter, R.A. 9054, through another plebiscite in August 2001.
The replacement of the ARMM with a new autonomous political entity, through
a political and legislative transitional process that would last until 2016, is
the main objective of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB), signed
October 15 this year by the government and MILF panels in Malacañang. Peace talks between the government and the MILF started Jan. 7, 1997, a
process that saw “ups and downs” causing its collapse over a dozen times,
sparked by security problems in many flashpoint areas the rebel group wants to
group together as Bangsamoro homeland. For a while, local sectors were euphoric over the signing of the FAB,
something residents of the autonomous region never thought would happen so soon,
much sooner than they expected.
President Aquino has created the Transition Commission (TransCom) through
Executive Order 120, to oversee the drafting of the Basic Bangsamoro Law that is
to become the “body and soul” of the Bangsamoro region. “We in the ARMM government are ready to make that vision come true. We are
ready to help in the transition process,” said the region’s acting governor,
Mujiv Hataman. Hataman, whom President Aquino appointed as ARMM's caretaker in December
2011, has been addressing the administrative and fiscal woes besetting the
ARMM’s dysfunctional bureaucracy, tainted with massive graft and
corruption. The region’s perennial, long-time mismanagement and the misuse of funds in
the coffers of its line agencies and support offices have been blamed for the
grinding poverty and widespread underdevelopment in its component provinces and
municipalities.
ARMM residents have lately been seeing outpouring of support for the FAB
and the TransCom, through public consultations participated by cross-section
communities, political and religious leaders and representatives of various
civil society organizations, or CSOs, in the autonomous region. Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, whose province is a known bastion of
the MILF, and Hataman are to jointly preside over a grand regional FAB forum in
Buluan town on January 12 to 13. Mangudadatu said he is expecting representatives of the MILF and the
government’s peace panel, officials of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on
the Peace Process, and leaders of Mindanao’s Christian religious communities to
participate in the dialogue in Buluan in the second district of
Maguindanao. Hataman and Mangudadatu were expected to renew the support of their
respective administrations to the on-going government-MILF talks during the
January 12-13 grand regional FAB forum.
There is so much reason for local sectors in the autonomous region to help
push the FAB forward and show support for the newly-created TransCom. Local folks witnessed bloodshed and saw the dislocation of about a million
residents in flashpoint areas in the south when President Joseph Estrada
embarked on an all out war policy against the MILF in 2000. Mr. Estrada’s military adventurism led to the government’s takeover of
close to 50 “main and minor” MILF camps, including Camps Busrah and Abubakar
Assidik, in Butig, Lanao del Sur and in Maguindanao’s Barira town, respectively,
amidst the 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities. Thousands were again displaced in February 2003 when government forces
drove away from the Buliok Complex, a 3,000-hectare guerilla enclave in
Pagalungan, Maguindanao, the chieftain of the MILF, Imam Salamat Hashim, forcing
him to relocate to Butig town in Lanao del Sur, where he eventually died of a
cardiovascular disease several months later. The last of the hostilities to wrack the South, which lasted for about one
year, was sparked by the aborted August 5, 2008 crafting by the GPH and MILF
panels in Malaysia of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD),
which was eventually junked as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The MOA-AD was the supposed basis for the setting up of a Southern Moro
homeland the MILF was to govern through its proposed Bangsamoro Juridical
Entity.
“We’ve had enough of bloodshed. It’s time to settle the Mindanao problem on
the negotiating table amicably, in the spirit of amity, fraternalism and
mutuality,” said Oblate priest Eliseo Mercado, Jr., director of the Institute
for Autonomy and Governance, and a convener of more than 50 peace advocacy
outfits involved in projects complementing the GPH-MILF talks. Thas been a fragile peace for over a year now in many supposedly
hostile areas in Mindanao. There has even been a “zero encounter” between
government and MILF forces in Central Mindanao in the past 15 months, enabling
non-government organizations, line agencies, local government units, the ARMM
leadership to freely implement socio-economic projects in far-flung areas
without any disruption. Peace advocacy outfits in ARMM are now busy encouraging voters to choose
candidates for local elective positions that are supportive of the Mindanao
peace process and are engaged in activities meant to prevent any outbreak of
military-MILF hostilities in their respective municipalities and
provinces. The ARMM is to hold its eight regional elections in May 2013, simultaneous
with the local and senatorial elections.
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