The Chief Justice Beyond BOL

The Chief Justice Beyond BOL

The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) between the United States and the Philippines must provide assurance for the persistent obsession of the US with enhancing US military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region. Peaceful. Suddenly, the agreement was there, obviously drafted with a secret dispatch when it became clear that President Noynoy Aquino would not pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) within the limits of his mandate. At the opening of the Kuala Lumpur Mindanao peace talks in 2012, the presidential advisor for the peace process, Teresita Deles, said the Mindanao peace talks were the centerpiece of the Aquino administration . These negotiations must concern all transpirations in the political arena, the removal of former Chief Justice Renato C. Corona being not the least. My view was then that the first magistrate was eliminated in order to quickly remove an obstacle to the planned decline in Philippine sovereignty by the creation of an independent state of Mindanao, the legal entity of Bangsamoro (BJE). I realized that such a depreciation of the Filipino nation was a necessary cog in the US design aimed at restoring the military bases indispensable to counter the increasingly strong claim of China on the South China Sea.

In 2008, under the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the memorandum of understanding on the ancestral domain (MOA-AD) would have been signed with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) had not been listed as constituent parts of the Palaban. the legal entity of Bangsamoro, which was to be created under the agreement, asked the Supreme Court to stop signing. Associate Judge Renato C. Corona then said: "It is not necessary to thoroughly investigate to claim that the MOA-AD is incongruous with the Philippine Constitution." And he did not It took a lot of depth to find that the BBL was being finalized in Kuala. The negotiations in Lumpur would face stiff resistance from Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, who currently sits. Therefore, the removal of Corona had a meaning: to remove a significant potential barrier to the BBL.

Alas, although the impediment of Corona was eliminated by his dismissal, problems arose: instead of immediately creating the BJE as provided for in the annexes to the Bangsamoro Global Agreement (CAB), signed by the chief negotiator of the government, Marvic Leonen, and the MILF panel headed by Mohagher Iqbal, the decisions made in Kuala Lumpur were subjected to the usual harshness of obtaining congressional approval. This almost caused a new escalation of hostilities between the MILF and the government.

According to a report by Roy Lagarde in CBCP News on June 15, 2012, we express this sentiment of MILF as follows: "Iqbal (chief negotiator of the MILF) said that the recent talks ended without any agreement and has repeated that he would not sign any peace. deal with the government unless President Benigno Aquino 3rd claims his demand for a Muslim sub-state. "

In its agreement with Leonen, Iqbal is assured that the BBL is a creation of the BJE and not the Filipino Congress.

In other words, the BJE is created first, then passes the BBL to govern the conduct of the BJE.

And yet arrives on March 27, 2016. Iqbal signs with Leonen ACR in the presence of MILF President Al Haj Muhrad Ibrahim, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and President Aquino. Did Iqbal know that the documents he signed would guide the creation of the Muslim sub-state through legislation of the Philippine Congress? This was certainly not the way the founder of the milf Hashim Salamat had envisioned the path of the Muslim insurgency. Hashim was for the complete separation of Muslim Mindanao from the Republic of the Philippines. In fact, until the legendary warrior Marines, the legendary general Mandirigma, Alexander F. Balutan, crushes the Abubakar camp in a series of ferocious battles in accordance with the policy of war of President Joseph Ejercito Estrada to By the end of the year 2000, the MILF is already running its own government in much of Mindanao.

For the MILF, the ACR should only be an instrument of surrender. Should we mention the massacre of SAF 44 to dramatize the frustration of the MILF in this regard? They are MILF fighters who, in an unbalanced battle that many knowledgeable military spirits call "friendly fire," have been wiped out, but the special special force of the Philippine National Police has been sent to capture the Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Abdhir, aka Marwan when the insurgency was presumed to have resulted in a peaceful settlement.

Nothing is finished until it is finished. Muslim legislation, renamed the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), was finally promulgated by President Duterte last August. But, according to a spokesman, the Muslims of Basilan, Tawi-Tawi and Sulu are seriously agitated by this turn of events. It now seems that the separatist struggle of the MILF is not so popular after all. The spokesman said that at a plebiscite, the BOL would face popular rejection.

The latest in this regard is Governor Sulu Abdusakur Tan, who filed a petition on October 11 to declare the BOL unconstitutional. Curiously, among the people interviewed in the petition – among whom are the Executive Secretary, Salvador Medialdea, the Head of the Interior and Local Government, Eduardo Año, members of the Senate and House of Representatives, the advisor President for the peace process, Jesus Dureza, and the Bangsamoro transition. Commission – is the MILF.

It seems absurd. The Philippine government and the MILF are supposed to have the same status as the belligerents, but now it takes someone who, instead of weighing the insurgency of the MILF to its scale, must ask a government court to declare this illegal insurrection. Is there a legal insurrection to start? Without the slightest intention of the petitioner, his action necessarily reduces the struggle of the MILF to the kind of crime that can be solved by simple judicial decision.

But the most serious concern in this regard is that the goal of the MILF has been placed at the discretion of the most feared man to make the real sale of Philippine sovereignty. Because what will happen if the Supreme Court decides in favor of the petitioner? The BOL will be declared unconstitutional. The MILF, torn from the legal field, will be back on the battlefield, which is its territory in the first place, serving the ends of the United States in their confrontation with China over the South China Sea.

Thus, the man at the helm of the Supreme Court will manage to go beyond the limited scope of the BOL to embark on adventures that could well plunge the country into war horizons not yet revealed. .