EDITORIAL - Legal limbo

Had the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain been signed in Malaysia by the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country would have been bound under international law to honor all provisions of the MOA-AD, even if it entailed amending the Constitution. Two Supreme Court justices made this observation as the tribunal heard arguments yesterday on petitions seeking to declare the MOA-AD unconstitutional.

Asked for comment on the court proceedings, Palace officials said the MOA-AD was “good as junked anyway.” Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol also told a radio station that the government officials who were supposed to sign the MOA-AD in Malaysia were not fully authorized to do so. So was that signing ceremony, with members of the diplomatic community and the World Bank representative in the Philippines among the witnesses, supposed to be nothing but a moro-moro?

The MILF insists that the MOA-AD had already been initialed and is therefore “a done deal” even without the formal signing in Malaysia. The government panel’s chief legal consultant admitted to the Supreme Court yesterday that implementing the MOA-AD would require amending constitutional provisions on the national territory, local government, the declaration of principles and state policies as well as the role of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

With the implications of the signing of the MOA-AD now coming to light, the government wants the petitions dismissed because, it argues, the agreement will no longer be signed anyway. But as long as the constitutionality of that agreement is not resolved, the MILF can be expected to trot out the initialed document to the international community and insist that what it has is a done deal that must be honored by the Philippine government.

Only the Supreme Court can declare otherwise and junk the MOA-AD with finality. Last year the courts refused to rule on the question of whether the spouse of the president of the Philippines is a public personality, after the First Gentleman withdrew about 40 libel cases he had filed against journalists. The MOA-AD controversy must not be allowed to languish in a similar legal limbo.