From the Manila Times (Mar 11):
CHURCH OFFICIALS DIVIDED OVER BB: MILF asks religious leaders to help save peace process
A senior official of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) on Wednesday called on the Catholic Church to help the government unite
the people behind efforts to bring peace to Mindanao.
Ghadzali Jafaar, MILF vice chairman for political affairs,
said the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), which is pending in Congress, was
a first step to unity and it could make combatants “drop their guns in exchange
for shovels, tractors for cannons, fertilizers for bombs and seedlings for
bullets.”
“The BBL is the first step to unite the people of Mindanao to forge a common peace for the sake of
progress,” Jafaar said in a news forum at the National Press Club.
Church officials, however, remain divided over the
constitutionality of the BBL amid increasing unhealthy speculations about the
fate of the peace roadmap agreed upon by the government and the MILF in wake of
the Mamasapano massacre that left 44 Special Action Force (SAF) troops dead.
The clash of opinions was also expressed on Wednesday by
Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Cardinal Quevedo and Fr. Jerome Secillano,
executive secretary, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP)
Permanent Committee on Public Affairs.
Ongoing offensive
In Maguindanao and North Cotabato, at least 23
more members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) were killed in
clashes with government forces, bringing to 97 the number of bandits killed
since the military launched an all-out offensive in the two provinces.
In a separate encounter with the Justice for Islamic Movement
(JIM) tagged by the military as a breakaway group of the BIFF, two Marines were
killed and two other soldiers were wounded in Barangay Pusao, Shariff Saydona
Mustapha, said Lt. Col. Harold Cabunoc, chief of the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP) Public Affairs Office.
The JIM led by one Mohhamad Ali Tambako was said to be the
group protecting Filipino bomb-maker Abdul Basit Usman and five international
terrorists. Both clashes, Cabunoc said, took place in Maguindanao.
Catholic principles
In defending the BBL, Quevedo said the proposed law is constitutional and is
even inspired by Catholic moral principles and Christian values.
In a pastoral letter, the Mindanao-based prelate argued that
contrary to the opinion of critics, the BBL would not pave the way for
disintegration of the Republic because under the proposed law, Bangsamoro
self-determination is only within a limited territory that would remain under
the control of the central government.
“The overall principle that governs the BBL is the Catholic moral
and social principle of subsidiarity, a principle already enshrined in our own
Constitution,” he said.
“The principle requires the intervention of the national
government and its various entities when the common good of all requires it.
Therefore, no entity of the Bangsamoro government, such as a Bangsamoro
auditing department or police force, is absolutely independent of their
national counterparts,” Quevedo added.
But Secillano did not buy Quevedo’s argument, saying the BBL
has many loopholes, pointing to provisions on self-rule and loose financial
management.
Secillano expressed apprehension that if these provisions
were left as is by Congress, it could sooner lead to the secession of Mindanao from the Republic.
“To make it appear that the powers of the central government
are not compromised and the right to self-rule of the Bangsamoro is not
jeopardized, the draft BBL came up with the words ‘coordination and
cooperation’ on matters that may potentially undermine both,” he said.
“The problem is the extent of coordination and cooperation
is not clearly spelled out, hence, there’s a difficulty in determining what
really ought to be done and what shouldn’t be,” Secillano added.
“After reading the draft though, I got the impression that
the Bangsamoro’s right to self-rule seems to be favored, with the central
government maybe consciously and slowly allowing the island of Mindanao
to slip from its grip,” he noted.
Congress has given itself until June or after lawmakers
return from the Holy Week break to pass the draft law.
The BBL’s enactment into law would pave the way fo the
establishment of a new autonomous region that would replace the existing
Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao or ARMM.
Just like in the ARMM, the central government guarantees the
flow of funds to the new autonomous region amounting to billions of pesos on
top of the region’s revenues from its own taxes, business fees, ports’
collections, mining fees and the cultivation of natural resources, among
others.
But Secillano said how the billions of pesos of funds would
be managed by the Bangsamoro government is something that is yet to be
clarified.
He expressed alarm over how the MILF would treat other armed
groups in the South such as the BIFF, JIM, Moro National Liberation Front and
Abu Sayyaf.
Protracted war
Jaafar, meanwhile, noted that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed
in Mindanao in “a protracted war” that has
been going on for decades. The fighting has been traced to the struggle of
Muslim Filipinos for autonomy, he said.
“Muslims and Christians have lived together in peace in the
towns and cities, but a secessionist war has sputtered off and on in the past
several years. The latest attempt to end the fighting resulted in a peace
agreement that opened the way for passage of the BBL,” according to the MILF
official.
Jafaar, a widely respected figure among Muslim leaders, said
the peace agreement and BBL offered an opportunity to end the war, which “only
brought anger and hatred among the people.”
“This is the time to stop firing our guns and start treating
one another as equals and brothers,” he added. “It is time to stop seeking
revenge and start choosing to forgive the ones, who caused us losses and
sufferings.”
Jafaar said the peace that Filipinos are craving was
“hanging in the air” and the delay in the passage of BBL would “kill real
progress that the whole country is entitled to.”
“Why don’t we just start acting as one people and
deliberately plan to utilize and maximize the great natural resources that Mindanao is offering?” he asked.
http://www.manilatimes.net/milf-asks-religious-leaders-to-help-save-peace-process/168763/
