Senator Win Gatchalian believes it will be more practical to execute the Bangsamoro Basic Law first before amending the 1987 Constitution to give way to a federal form of government.
He noted Monday that the BBL, which would establish an autonomous Bangsamoro region in Mindanao, “is in the advanced stages already” considering previous administrations conducted extensive consultations and coordinations with its different stakeholders.
An ally of President Rodrigo Duterte, Gatchalian said shifting to federalism “is a much more complex transition” than the BBL, and entails a nationwide change in the form of government “and the debates will probably take a considerable amount of time.”
Another Duterte ally, Senator Panfilo Lacson, said they cannot promise to accede to the President’s desire that a change to federalism comes ahead of the Bangsamoro state.
“I don’t think we can promise that. While the public hearings on BBL have been proceeding quite smoothly, there’s a lot of unresolved issues yet to be discussed concerning charter change,” Lacson admitted.
Even the much-ballyhooed “agreement” between leaders of Congress has not been discussed, much less consented to, by the majority of senators.
For one, Lacson said setting aside the issue—of how the Senate and the House of Representatives will vote in case a constitutional assembly is adopted by the Senate in favor of which amendments to propose—seems analogous to the proverbial “cart before the horse” situation.
The President had said over the weekend that under the federal form of government, the questions of the BBL’s constitutionality “will be easily approved and resolved.”
“There are provisions, at this early, which Congress has been saying as unconstitutional. Let’s start to sort it out. Let us show the Moro that we are trying our best, that those constitutional provisions that will be violated can be corrected if there is a federal setup,” Duterte said.
Senator Miguel Zubiri said the President voiced his priorities “which is now apparently a moving target” as he had departed from his original statement of passing the BBL before tackling federalism.
Zubiri said he was inclined to follow the legislative agenda of the Senate, targeting the passage of the BBL in the chamber by March.
“We have completed the Senate’s first leg of the BBL out-of-town hearings, so I’m optimistic that we can meet our deadline before the adjournment,” he said.
Opposition Sen. Risa Hontiveros said they cannot allow the protracted debates on charter change to hold hostage their “long-overdue commitment to our Moro brothers and sisters.”
She said the process of changing the constitution “has not even started yet.” In fact, Hontiveros noted Congress is still debating on whether to vote jointly or separately, and what specific provisions of the constitution need amending.
“Then there will be tedious deliberations and a national plebiscite. Our Moro brothers and sisters have waited long enough for the passage of the BBL. It is our surest path to peace,” she said.
The President Duterte cannot use the charter change or federalism process to replace the BBL process, Hontiveros said, because it will result in a situation “in which the creation of a Bangsamoro state would effectively be decided by the people of Luzon and the Visayas,” instead of the people in Mindanao.
This would not cure the historical and continuing injustices committed against the Moro people and would not be reflective of the gains of the peace process, she said.
“This would also defeat the Moro people’s rights as a distinct people to freely determine their political status and realize their economic, social and cultural development. Charter change would subject the Moro question into a national plebiscite instead of a plebiscite among the Bangsamoro. This would be fundamentally unjust.”
She said the creation of the Bangsamoro is incompatible with the provisions of Duterte’s proposed federal model. For instance, the Bangsamoro parliament is designed after the sultanate model, taking into account the cultural particularities of the Bangsamoro people.
“I am worried that this would be diluted in President Duterte’s federal model, which contemplates a devolution of powers that is blind to the distinct culture and history of the Bangsamoro,” Hontiveros said.
“Ultimately I fear that Duterte’s version of federalism, which his allies plan to achieve through an undemocratic and Senate-less constituent assembly and subsequently, reward themselves with term limit extensions, might be used a monkey wrench to defeat the Moro people’s legitimate aspiration for self-determination as embodied in the BBL,” she added.