How do you create another state within a state?
The draft legislative measure for the enactment of the Bangsamoro Basic Law is now in the hands of both Houses of Congress. President Benigno Aquino III has turned over the bill to Senate President Franklin M. Drilon and Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr in a ceremony attended by officials and negotiators of both panels. The passage of this measure is easier said than done. This is a very contentious issue and we doubt if both houses can pass the measure before the president leaves Malacañang at the end of his term. It is still a big question if the next president and the next Congress would consider the measure as deserving of high priority.
There are even legal luminaries that the proposed legislation, even assuming the same shall pass Congress and Presidential approval, can pass judicial scrutiny, when its oppositors shall seek its declaration of nullity for being unconstitutional. For the jugular issue that both proponents and objectors shall confront is: Is it constitutional to create a nation or a state within another nation or state? Is it legally feasible to install a government within a larger government? Of course, the constitutionalists would say No.
Lest it be misunderstood, let it be made clear at the beginning that the goals and objectives, the rationale and the philosophy behind the measure are sound and acceptable to most people that we heard. Various legal views have been expressed by law professors, deans and top political law experts and the preponderance of legal opinions are to the effect that the Bangsamoro Basic Law cannot pass the ultimate test of judicial review. For how can we ever reconcile between the attributes of local autonomy and the elements of an independent state. The line between autonomy and independence is thin and often very difficult to define.
The Bangsamoro people, the lumads and the Muslims and other cultural communities in Mindanao have long suffered and have long been deprived of their ancestral domain and natural patrimony. They had been ignored, marginalized, ostracized, driven away from their ancestral villages and homes, and deprived of meaningful participation in government and civil society. The rebellion and intermittent attacks conducted by various factions are merely the tips of the giant icebergs that contain the multiple grievances of the Bangsamoro all the many decades in our history as a nation and as a people.
But then again, the end does not justify the means. Meaning that, notwithstanding its noble and even sublime rationale and purposes, and regardless of its sound objectives, the fact is that the Bangsamoro State as the proposed manner of addressing the Bangsamoro's valid issues could not be legally justified as the correct solution to the many problems in Mindanao. This piece of legislative measure will not see the light of day. It will die a natural death in the House. And the Senate may have to bury it.
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