A 'failed experiment'

When Congress resumes session in May, one issue awaiting definitive outcome, besides the impeachment trial of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, is whether the Senate would approve the bill seeking to postpone the elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), scheduled by law on August 8, and synchronize them with the mid-term elections in 2013.

President Aquino had certified HB 4146 as urgent and pushed for its approval before Congress recessed last week, but only the House approved it.

The issue seethes with controversy. Mr. Aquino wants time to institute electoral reforms in the ARMM before holding the elections. But if the polls were postponed until May 2013, he would appoint interim officials to serve until then.

Those who oppose the bill aver that such appointments would violate the Constitution and the ARMM Organic Act (RA 9065). The Constitution vests the President only with supervisory powers over the ARMM, not the power to appoint officers-in-charge, they argue, and RA 9065 explicitly calls for the people to elect their officials.

Beyond the legal grounds, the oppositionists see a partisan motive. They suspect that certain administration power players want to place their own men in positions of power in the ARMM to gain advantage in the 2013 and 2016 elections. The Healing Democracy Group (of Muslim-Christian electoral reform advocates) says the planned appointments are “political payback” to those who “made sure that President Aquino got the needed votes in the ARMM to win in the 2010 elections.”

Healing Democracy Group bristles over the postponement advocates’ claim that the ARMM is a “failed experiment” because it is corruption-ridden. “But isn’t the ARMM just a microcosm of the whole Philippine government… regarded as one of the leading corrupt governments in Asia?” the group countered during a public consultation by the House committees on suffrage and Muslim affairs in Cotabato City last March 10.

“Why pinpoint the ARMM for all the troubles of a ‘failed experiment’ done by the national government? It was the national government that failed… not the people (of) the ARMM,” the group pointed out in a position paper. The ARMM, it added, “is not even the autonomy that the MNLF and MILF fought for in more than 40 years. It is not an expression of their right to self-determination.”

The people cannot freely determine their future because Malacanang controls their government, the group laments. The ARMM has to “beg” for its meager budget from Congress because it has no control over its natural resources, while the national government gets huge profits from selling such resources to foreign firms.

Healing Democracy Group has a valid point. It’s supported by the ARMM’s genesis as the product of peace negotiations between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and three successive governments.

The autonomous region was intended to enable the Bangsamoro (Moro people) to exercise their right to self-determination within their defined ancestral domain. It was originally supposed to cover 13 provinces and 10 cities of Mindanao and Sulu, as delineated in the Tripoli Agreement of 1976.

It never got close to being that, mainly because of one misstep by the MNLF, as Nur Misuari ruefully affirmed later. Under strong pressures from the Organization of Islamic Conference that facilitated the peace negotiations, the MNLF accepted the option of autonomy “within the framework of the Constitution and territorial integrity of the Philippines.”

The consequences are:

1. In 1977 President Marcos unilaterally set up the autonomous region constituting only of the areas covered by Regions 9 and 12. The MNLF felt shortchanged, rejected the formation, and resumed its armed struggle towards secession. However, the MNLF suffered setbacks when it broke up into three factions, one each in Sulu (Misuari), Maguindanao (Hashim Salamat), and Lanao (Dimas Pundato).

2. In 1987 the Cory Aquino government, which had revived the GRP-MNLF peace talks and passed the ARMM Organic Act, unilaterally established the ARMM and held a referendum. Result: only Maguindanao, Sulu, Tawi-tawi, and Lanao del Sur voters approved it. The MNLF rejected the result and broke away from peace talks.

3. In 1996 the Ramos government signed a Final Peace Agreement with the MNLF. Misuari became ARMM governor and was named head of the Southern Philippines Council for Peace and Development (SPCPD). But both the ARMM and SPCPD were under Malacanang’s thumb. With a wee budget that mostly went to salaries of personnel, and no money for the SPCPD, Nur failed to implement any development project.

4. In 2002 President Arroyo appointed another MNLF leader, Farouk Hussein, as ARMM governor. In a March 23 forum at UP Diliman, Hussein narrated the difficulties he underwent with inadequate funds and no support for the reforms he wanted to implement.

Arroyo also formed the Bangsamoro Development Authority, purportedly to harness foreign assistance to and manage ARMM development projects. Like the SPCPD, the BDA hasn’t worked as intended. 

The Aquino government is now pursuing “exploratory” talks with the MILF, and separately with the MNLF, to finally resolve the issue of ancestral domain via an autonomous region far beyond what the ARMM is at present. Will the experiment succeed this time?