What is substantial?

I met with a group of constitutional reformists recently over lunch and we had a spirited conversation on the effects of the Supreme Court’s decision on the failed MOA-AD. I learned a lot from that conversation but none more important than to realize that the national conversation on the MOA-AD was more focused on peripheral matters than it was on the substance of the Bangsamoro issue.

Although I read and talk a lot about the issue, I found myself hesitating when someone in the group challenged me — well, what then is the substance? I remember replying that at the heart of the issue was the Muslim desire for a “homeland” and in my limited understanding it is about a piece of land (part of Mindanao) Moros historically claim as their home, where they can be free and take charge of their future.

Having said that, I returned home, going over again and again with the idea of a Moro homeland still in mind. I only half-understood the idea and that I could only deal with it as a metaphor.

The metaphor: You can love your children with all your heart and soul but in the end you must free them to carve their own lives. All nurturing should prepare them for that. Do you cease to be a parent or be a family when you set them free? Not at all.

The relationship between the national government and Moros can be likened to an enlightened parent setting her children free so they can forge lives of their own. Although Moros can hardly be called children, but that is another story. The metaphor has to do with how northern Christian Filipinos since they took over from former colonialists have treated Moros as children to discipline and made to follow a life that local rulers as new colonialists have made out for them no matter how incongruous and repugnant it is to their own beliefs and value system.

To translate the metaphor into a political structure would mean finding a just solution in which Moros, as our historical allies in the colonial wars of independence, can be set free while remaining within the Filipino family. The Moros themselves accept that they are not asking to be separated — too much has happened to turn back the wheels of time. They are asking to be justly treated.

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Meanwhile the International Crisis Group an independent, non-partisan body which advises governments, and international bodies among them United Nations, European Union and World Bank, has put a red alert on the Mindanao conflict since the Supreme Court thumbed down the MOA-AD. In its latest briefing it said “the immediate task now is to prevent escalation of fighting and discourage the government and local officials from arming civilians.”

A widely influential group, ICG asked interested governments and donors to pressure both sides to keep existing ceasefire mechanisms working at the same time that efforts must continue so GRP-MILF return to talks.

“Peace talks have broken down before but never in this way, with government institutions and the political elite fundamentally rejecting the achievements of the negotiators. It will be much harder this time, even if talks resume, to simply pick up from where they left off,” says Sidney Jones, Crisis Group senior adviser.

It has an influential board of trustees of senior statesmen and women who pride in making things happen.

Crisis Group’s Board is co-chaired by Lord (Christopher) Patten, formerly EU Commissioner for External Relations, Governor of Hong Kong, and UK Cabinet Minister; and by Ambassador Thomas Pickering, former US Ambassador to the UN, Russia, India, Israel, Jordan, El Salvador and Nigeria and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, and former Senior Vice President for International Relations at Boeing. Crisis Group’s president and CEO has been, since January 2000, Gareth Evans, former Foreign Minister of Australia (1988-96) and a member of many international panels and commissions. Former President Fidel V. Ramos is a member of its executive committee. Surin Pitsuwan, former Foreign Minister of Thailand, Kofi Annan are advisers and members of its executive committee.

The group expressed strong and bitter words against the Supreme Court ruling. The effects of its decision is being carefully watched. Among other things it added that Arroyo’s opponents and potential successors after the 2010 elections also saw political advantage to be gained from objecting to the draft.

The ruling “has ended hope of a peaceful resolution in the near future,’’ the ICG said in a statement yesterday .

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It is good to hear that former Speaker JDV is back on his feet with an advocacy close to his heart — interfaith dialogues. After all, he has actively promoted this cause in his capacity as vice-president for Asia in the Centrist Democratic International.

The former speaker is co-president with French Ambassador Gerard Chesnel in the French Legion of Honor Association in Manila. It announced in a press release the group will rebuild the first Muslim Mosque in the Philippines built in Tawi-Tawi in 1380, years before the arrival in 1521 of Spanish colonizers.

Chesnel and de Venecia said it is a “small humble project but it symbolizes Christian-Muslim solidarity in a strategic isle of the Sulu Sea where Islam began in the Philippines. It is a dramatic expression as well of Philippine and French foreign policy.”

National Historical Institute’s Ludovico Badoy and Rep. Nur Jaafar are tasked to refurbish the tomb of Sheik Karimul Makdum and instill appropriate markers in Tubig, Indangan, Simulmul, Tawi-Tawi, facing the Borneo island of Sabah, the statement said.

 (As I have said many times in this column, peace agreements should include wide ranging activities which bring Muslims and Christians working together.) They had their first multi-sector conference Thursday with the Historical Institute and Rep. Jaffar.

The Makdum Mosque Foundation under its president M.A. Bayo will work with the French Legion of Honor Association, the Historical Institute, the Tawi-Tawi Governor and Congressman and leaders of civil society to finish the project in April or May 2009.

By the way much of the spade work to organize the Legion of Honor awardees into meaningful projects was done by French business leader and Association vice-president Louis Paul Heusaff.

The Filipino-French association board of directors and officers that endorsed the project included Grace Glory Go, executive vice-president of Philippine STAR, vice president Philippe Gauthier, Noel Laman, and former Finance Secretary Roberto de Ocampo, and Carolle Lucas, French press attaché.