COTABATO CITY, May 13 (PNA) — Archbishop Orlando Cardinal Quevedo of Cotabato and convenor of Friends of Peace (FOP), on Wednesday issued a point to ponder for the members of the House of Representatives tackling the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).
He issued the statement as the lawmakers, both in the House and the Senate, are at the homestretch of discussions, deliberation and eventually voting, of the draft BBL into law as the final phase of the government’s peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in southern Philippines.
Quevedo said the country’s legislators are considered to be in the enviable position to crown 17 years of peacemaking by approving the draft BBL into law.
The BBL, once it becomes a law, will be the basis of creating a new political entity in Mindanao and will replace the current Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
“To my mind, they are not only legislators. Regarding the BBL their legislative role is eminently one of peacemaking,” Quevedo said, expressing hope they will live up to the expectations.
“They (legislators) can either ignore the painstaking achievement of 17 years of peacemaking by emasculating the BBL in such a way that the aspiration of self-determination becomes once more a hollow dream,” he said in a statement describing BBL as the roadmap to just and lasting peace.
“Or they can strengthen the BBL, refining its letter and preserving its spirit, such that the issues of constitutionality, national sovereignty, territorial integrity, devolution of power, the nature of a regional autonomous region, the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Christian minorities, as well as peoples of other faiths, and other issues, are resolved,” the cardinal said.
Quevedo admitted that the BBL will not solve all the problems of criminality and lack of peace nor end all armed conflict due to “rido” or land disputes.
“Small groups will continue to fight for secession. But the BBL is the alternative for the greatest majority of the Bangsamoro and for our own military and security forces who are tired of war. It is the alternative to radicalization and extremism now spreading towards Southeast Asia and creeping into our shores,” he pointed out.
He said the “Lord of history has brought us to a crossroad on the journey to a just and lasting peace.”
Quevedo explained that “the crossroad is akin to the scriptural crossroad. One way leads to death. The other leads to life.”
Some lawmakers are inclined to pass a draft into law minus its contentious issues which many perceived to be inferior than the current Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
But Quevedo said “to approve a BBL that is lesser than the Organic Act of the ARMM and falls short of self-determination as liberally granted by the Constitution is to perpetuate social injustice and human underdevelopment.”
However, he said, to approve a BBL, strengthened by legislative wisdom, and preserving substantively the letter and spirit of the proposed BBL “leads to social justice, peace and human development.”
According to Quevedo, who spent more than half of his religious life in Mindanao, said the GPH and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) peace negotiations were centered on three major socio-political and moral principles.These are the a) the preservation of national sovereignty, b) the safeguarding of national territorial integrity, and c) the realization of self-determination for the Bangsamoro.
“The BBL is firmly rooted on these three major principles,” Quevedo added.
He said towards this goal of self-determination, the MILF had to explicitly gave up and sacrificed its original identity as a separatist movement and become the Bangsamoro voice to be part and parcel of the Republic of the Philippines.
Fundamentally, peace negotiators, with legal and constitutional partners, meticulously strove to articulate the various provisions in such a way that a) the provisions are constitutional; b) the self-determination granted is not a first step towards secession; and c) that the autonomy of the Bangsamoro would be more than what has been granted by the Organic Act that created the current ARMM.
He said the principles of “subsidiarity and solidarity,” already enshrined in the Constitution, and the principle of devolution of powers govern the asymmetrical relationship between the proposed regional Bangsamoro autonomous government and the national government.
The cardinal has been religiously following the government’s peace overtures in Mindanao, describing the journey to peace in Southern Philippines as “arduous and tedious, at times hostile and adversarial, replete with stops and punctuated by intermittent warfare and all out war.”
“But at other times, the journey was collaborative, infused with mutual trust, slowly reaching the final steps — the 10 Decision Points on Principles, Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB), later the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) and finally the proposed BBL.
He said for more than 17 years both peace panels with changes of personnel, persistently pursued peace.
Quevedo said world and local history has repeatedly shown how no one can quell a rebellion for self-determination by guns. When victory seems to have been won, the aspiration for self-determination lives on and will once again erupt into armed conflict.
“Such is the nature of the Bangsamoro aspiration for self-determination which no successive regimes, colonial, Spanish, American, or Filipino, could slay,” he said. (PNA)