It is almost certainly correct to say that when President Rodrigo Duterte placed Mindanao and its adjacent islands under martial law, the great majority of the Filipino people questioned the placement under Proclamation No. 216 of the whole of this country’s second largest island.
Their disagreement with the coverage of the Proclamation found resonance in the dissenting opinions of a minority of the members of the Supreme Court. Why did the entire island have to be placed under the control of the military when only Marawi City and its environs were under attack from the Maute forces, the dissenting justices asked. There was no evidence, they argued, of any Maute-related uprisings in other parts of Mindanao.
In my view the dissenting justices were absolutely right in their contention.
Marawi City and its immediately surrounding area are not Mindanao. They represent only a small part of the island. Marawi City is no more Mindanao than Bayombong is the whole of Northern Luzon or Naga City of the whole of Southern Luzon. The Philippines is not a small country – it is about as large as Great Britain – and Mindanao is not a small island. The distance from the southernmost point of the Zamboanga peninsula to Surigao City and the distance from Dipolog City to Davao City are both close to 1,000 kilometers. Truly, Marawi City is a very small part of a very large island.
Not only is Mindanao characterized by hugeness; it is also characterized by non-homogeneity. Mindanao is diverse in several ways: in terms of religion (Christian, Muslim and Manobo), in terms of ethnicity (Maranao, Maguindanao, Tausug, Yakan and lumad) and in terms of economic development (fairly well developed, somewhat developed and still largely agricultural). Thus, it makes little sense to treat Mindanao as if it were a homogeneous, non-diverse whole.
In terms of economic development, Mindanao is divisible into four geographical terms, namely, the Northern Corridor (stretching from the Misamis provinces to the Surigao provinces, including Buidnon, the Zamboanga Peninsula and the western island provinces, Central-Southwestern Mindanao and the Davao provinces. Of the four areas, the Northern Corridor provinces are comparatively the most developed, with the cities of Dipolog, Cagayan de Oro, Iligan and Butuan as the growth leaders. Second in terms of economic development are Davao City and the three Davao provinces. The area around General Santos City – better known as Gensan – is a locus of rapid growth, but Central-Southwestern Mindanao has remained still largely agricultural in character. The same is true of the Zamboanga Peninsula and the three nearby island provinces, with Zamboanga City as the exceptions to the still-largely-agricultural character of that part of Mindanao.
Two things are clear about the second largest island of this country. The first is that Mindanao is a huge piece of real estate and places like Marawi City are only a small part – a very small part – of an enormous whole. The second is that making policy for all of Mindanao on account of something that has happened in Marawi or Zamboanga City is every bit as irrational as making policy for the whole of Luzon on account of something that has occurred in Tuguegarao City or Legazpi City.
The essence of the dissenting justices’ position against the placement of the entire island of Mindanao under martial law is that all Mindanaoans should not be made to suffer for something bad that has happened in a small part of their island. I fully concur in their dissent.
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