Move to delete provisions in BBL could derail decommissioning process

From the Manila Bulletin (Jan 3): Move to delete provisions in BBL could derail decommissioning process

A Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MIF) official yesterday warned that unless the government stops moves to delete 11 provisions from the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law, the Moro front will not be too keen on turning over the first batch of high-powered firearms to start the decommissioning process of their combatants.

Robert Maulana Marohombsar Alonto, a member of the MILF peace panel and the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) that crafted the BBL, exposed the alleged move in his social media (Facebook) posting   to caution other well-meaning members of the Senate and the House about it.

Alonto named the proponent only as “an important member of Congress who happens to sit in the Lower House Ad Hoc Committee” tackling the BBL.

He said the unnamed lawmaker was reported in the media as saying that “about 11 provisions in the BBL now being reviewed by Congress have to be stricken out for being ‘unconstitutional.’”

Alonto said the move was giving credence to their apprehension that Malacañang “harmonized the BBL drafted by the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) with the Constitution.”

“In public hearings conducted by Congress, we invariably expressed the apprehension that the BBL might come out of the process will no longer reflect the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB) signed by the MILF and the GPH after 17 years of political negotiations and four decades of armed conflict,” he said.

He said the move would “totally ignore – either out of sheer intransigence or stupidity – the history of the Bangsamoro question and the political negotiations that produced the FAB and its spawn, the BBL.”

Officials of the government and MILF peace panels had earlier announced that the Moro front was set to stage this month a symbolic turnover the first batch of high-powered firearms to the government to start the decommissioning process of the group’s combatants.

But Alonto hinted that unless the deletion move was reconsidered, “there will also be no decommissioning – symbolic or otherwise.”

He charged that the unnamed proponent and other Congress members opposed to the BBL tend to “make matters worse by reneging on (government) political commitments in the FAB and the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.”

Alonto did not mention the 11 provisions deemed by the proponent as “unconstitutional.”

An independent decommissioning body, led by the Turkish Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), will convene this month to roll out the decommissioning of weapons of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) combatants.

The independent body, which will be composed of foreign experts from Brunei and Norway and four locals, has already fine-tuned the process of a gradual phase manner of decommissioning. However, the process does not necessarily follow a certain framework of an international body on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR).

Lawyer Al Jukifli, a member of the GPH peace panel, said a symbolic turn-over will happen anytime to start the decommissioning process. He said the decommissioning process will apply to the peculiarities of the local situation.

http://www.mb.com.ph/move-to-delete-provisions-in-bbl-could-derail-decommissioning-process/