Charter change answer to Bangsamoro problem

Charter change, answer to Bangsamoro problem—MILF

QUEZON City, May 8, 2011—A constitutionalist who is now a senior member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has claimed Charter change is the only way to end the Bangsamoro problem.

Atty. Michael Mastura, elected delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1971, said “there is no other way” to resolve the Bangsamoro problem but a Charter change “because our issue is a constitutional issue.”

He gave the statement in answer to a question raised by a nun during a series of consultation meetings with the MILF peace negotiators at TECHNOHUB along Commonwealth Ave.

One of the nuns who attended the consultation meeting had asked Mastura if the MILF proposal would require constitutional change.

“The answer to this question is the very solution to the issue of independenc,” the lawyer said.

Mastura and four other panel members took turns in answering the question raised by a representative of the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines from different perspectives.

Passionate as he has ever been, Mastura emphasized that the MILF has already abandoned its bid for independence even if they could “not accept a unitary state,” a reason he cited in appealing for Filipinos to open their minds and closely examine their proposed draft comprehensive agreement that they handed to the government peace panel during the April 27-28 negotiation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Included in the MILF’s draft proposal is an annex that would detail two schemes in changing the constitution, one would be through referendum and the other is amendment by appendage, the latter, Mastura believes may not be readily acceptable for the government.

In expanding the claim that the Moro problem is a constitutional issue, Mastura cited Article 10 of the Constitution which he said has 14 sections about autonomy.

“What is being contested here is Article 10—about the autonomous region, which has 14 sections.”

He implied that what they were asking from government was too much of a compromise from their original demand for independence.

“We are no longer asking for a parity rights. We are only asking for parity esteem,” Mastura told a crowd of over a hundred representatives of church, and civil society organizations.

He added that when the MILF abandoned its demand for cessation, they were “open to unity. We want unity with you,” referring to the non-Muslims.

Since they were “open to unity,” Mastura relayed that they exerted efforts to ensure not to offend the non-Muslims by carefully choosing the language and words they used in their proposals, citing the “Bangsamoro Juridical Entity” in reference to the territory proposed to be government by the Bangsamoro people.

The BJE, classified in three categories, is composed of 785 barangays in Muslim dominated areas of Mindanao.

“But even the Supreme Court,” which botched the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain in 2008, “did not even know what it was.”

In the MILF’s draft, it proposed a State-Sub-state relationship between the national government and the Moro-governed region in Mindanao and since the country’s Constitution does not speak of it (State-Sub-state) the more there is a need to change the Charter, Mastura told the crowd which majority expressed support to the GPH-MILF peace process at the end of the consultation.

Many of the participants to the consultation admitted they campaigned against the MOA-AD in 2008 because they believed that changing the Constitution would open a floodgate of proposed changes to the Charter that would ensure then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo could hold on to power.

The MILF said that the Aquino administration can change the Constitution through a constitutional process. (Romy Elusfa