Reformatted Bangsamoro draft law ready for submission to Congress

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) now has new draft of Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), an enabling measure for the 2014 final compact between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). 

The commission, chaired by MILF’s Ghazali Jaafar, is comprised of representatives from the group and the national government, whose task is to reformat the original draft BBL which the House of Representatives junked last year for containing unconstitutional provisions.

A BTC member, peace activist Susana Anayatin, said on Saturday that Jaafar and all commissioners signed the reformatted draft BBL on Friday, after about four months of extensive paper works and consultations with stakeholders to the Mindanao peace process.

“All was well. All ended well,” said Anayatin, chairperson of a volunteer multi-sectoral advisory board supporting the peace–building activities of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division.

Jaafar, first vice chairman of the MILF’s collegial central leadership core, said the new draft BBL has 112 pages containing 18 vital provisions.

“It aims to establish unity, lasting peace, justice, truth and dignity among all people in the Bangsamoro area,” Jaafar told reporters.

He described the new draft BBL as a “beautiful proposal." He said the proposed BBL does not discriminate any of the country’s Muslim, Lumad and Christian communities.

“It aims to protect all positive interests of our people. It does not violate any of the sacred rights of Mindanao’s non-Muslim indigenous people and the Christians,” Jaafar said.

Lawyer Jose Lorena, also a BTC commissioner, said the crafting of the new draft BBL was done in utmost transparency, guided by inputs gathered from various sectors in the envisioned core territory of the Bangsamoro region.

The new draft BBL is an enabling measure for the replacement of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with a more empowered Bangsamoro political entity.

The ARMM, existing since 1990, is covered by a regional charter, the Republic Act 9054, a constitutional mandate that can only be repealed or amended via an act of Congress.

Jaafar said the BTC’s concept of an empowered self-governing Bangsamoro entity is one with a parliament of combined Muslim, Christian and Lumad members.

He said the final draft of the new BBL was sealed with an electoral imprimatur, via a concurrence voting process, by all of them in the commission.

“We all affixed our signatures to the draft law after a unanimous approval of its form and spirit,” Jaafar said on Saturday.

He said the presence of Christian and Lumad members in the BTC ensured democracy in the crafting of all provisions of the new draft Bangsamoro law.

Among the members of the BTC are three representatives from the largest group in the Moro National Liberation Front, lawyers Firdausi Abbas, a Maranaw, and Omar Sema, who is of Maguindanaon descent, and a veteran guerrilla leader, Hatimil Hassan, a Yakan from Basilan.

Hassan, concurrent vice chairman of the MNLF, was an erstwhile member of ARMM’s 24-seat Regional Legislative Assembly.

The MNLF group the three of them represent in the BTC is more known as the “Sema MNLF bloc,” originally led by former Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema.

Unlike the faction of MNLF’s founder, Nur Misuari, Sema and his followers, composing more than 20 revolutionary states scattered in mainland Mindanao, in the ARMM provinces and in Palawan, are not hostile to the MILF.

Sema and followers joined in the MILF’s peace overture with the national government in 2016, responding to efforts of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to converge both groups in charting a durable remedy to the decades-old Mindanao Moro issue.

The OIC, an organization of more than 50 Muslim countries, including petroleum-exporting states in the Middle East and North Africa, brokered the Sept. 2, 1996 final peace agreement between the MNLF and Malacañang.

The firebrand Misuari has persistently been ranting about the government's alleged failure to comply with certain sensitive provisions of the 1996 government-MNLF truce.

Officials from OIC-member states were present during the signing of the March 27, 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro, the final compact between the government and the MILF.

The event was held in Malacañang, attended by all government and MILF peace negotiators, the then President Benigno Aquino III and ARMM officials led by the region's chief executive, Gov. Mujiv Hataman.

Members of the BTC are now preparing for the submission of the rewritten draft BBL to Congress through the office of President Rodrigo Duterte.

BTC commissioners and various peace advocacy groups in Mindanao are expecting Duterte to certify the proposed bill as urgent to hasten its enactment into law.