COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Mindanao had four plebiscites related to the Moro issue in about 40 years and stakeholders to the southern peace process can only hope the one held Monday shall be the last.
The January 21 plebiscite for the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) was not the first since Malacañang started addressing the Moro secessionist rebellion in the 1970s.
The first ever plebiscite for Moro autonomy was administered during the time of President Ferdinand Marcos after the signing in Libya of the vaunted Dec. 23, 1976 Tripoli Agreement between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
One of the objectives of the agreement, brokered by then President Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC, was to group together nine southern cities and 13 provinces into a Moro-led autonomous self-governing geographical entity.
Malaysia, a “third party facilitator” of the peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), is also a member of OIC, a bloc of more than 50 Muslim states, including petroleum-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
Among those who crafted the Tripoli Agreement, on government’s behalf, were former Maguindanao Rep. Simeon Datumanong, a Maguindanaon, and the ethnic Meranao Lininding Pangandaman, then an ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who was to serve as governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) from 1993 to 1996.
That plebiscite resulted in the creation of the Regional Autonomous Governments, or ARGs, in Regions 9 and 12, or the Lupong Tagapagpaganap ng Pook in each of the two regions.
There was another plebiscite in 1989 for the ratification of the first charter of ARMM, the Republic Act 6734, that fused together Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi as ARMM's component-provinces.
A Maguindanaon lawyer, Zacaria Candao, who was counsel of MNLF founder Nur Misuari during the crafting of the Tripoli Agreement, became the first elected ARMM regional governor, serving from 1990 to 1993.
The RA 6734 was amended via another plebiscite in late 2001 to become the RA 9054 that resulted in the inclusion of Basilan and Marawi City into ARMM's core territory.
The plebiscite for the ratification of the BOL, or Republic Act 11054, on January 21, was the fourth since the 1970s.
The government’s diplomatic dealings with southern secessionists began with talks with the MNLF in 1972 that ended with the signing of the government-MNLF final truce on Sept. 2, 1996 that, as consequence, catapulted Misuari to the helm of the ARMM government.
Misuari was elected ARMM governor three days after he and the administration of President Fidel Ramos forged the peace deal.
The peace overture between the national government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that splintered from the MNLF in the early 1980s started Jan. 7, 1997, barely three months after Misuari and the Ramos administration had forged a compact.
The MILF was founded by Ustadz Salamat Hashim, who studied Islamic theology at the Al-Azzhar University in Cairo, Egypt.
He and Misuari co-founded the MNLF but got estranged over irreconcilable revolutionary and religious ideals.
Hashim, born in Barangay Cudal in Pagalungan town in Maguindanao, established the MILF in the early 1980s. He died of cardiovascular ailment while in Butig town in Lanao del Sur in 2003.
Hashim’s chairmanship of the MILF’s central committee was taken over by Hadji Murad Ebrahim, then figurehead of the front’s Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces.
The government-MILF peace talks began on Jan. 7, 1997 and ended with the crafting on March 27, 2014 of the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro, or CAB.
The symbolic launching of the negotiation was held in the now defunct Da’awa Center in Simuay Junction in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao.
The government-MILF peace process spanned through four presidents --- Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Benigno Aquino III.
The government and the MILF first had in July 2008 the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain, or MOA-AD that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional several weeks later.
The BOL, ratified via the January 21 plebiscite, was premised on two accords between the government and the MILF --- the 2012 Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro and the 2014 CAB.
Talks between the Aquino administration and the MILF reached a Bangsamoro Basic Law, or BBL, that was shelved after the bloody Jan. 25, 2015 “Mamasapano incident” that shook the nation to its core.
After the election of President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016, Malacañang and the MILF revised the BBL through the Bangsamoro Transition Commission, comprised of representatives from the rebel group and from the national government.
Duterte shepherded the new BBL through the House of Representatives with the help of lawmakers in ARMM, among them Maguindanao’s two congressional representatives, Sandra Sema and Sajid Mangudadatu, Anak Mindanao Party-list Rep. Amihilda Sangcopan and Tawi-Tawi Rep. Ruby Sahali.
The new BBL, or the RA 11054, or BOL, was approved by the bicameral committee of the House of Representatives and Senate in July 2018.
The measure, ratified during Monday's plebiscite, shall pave the way for the replacement of the now 29-year ARMM with an MILF-led BARMM.