Dead in the water.
That seems to be the fate of the Bangsamoro Basic Law which seeks to establish a Bangsamoro entity to supplant and replace the current Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
At the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments hearing on Monday, Feb. 2, legal luminaries (law deans and jurists) took turns denouncing the BBL as unconstitutional. Their cogent arguments were backed by the passion of the day—the growing outrage over the Mamasapano massacre of Jan. 25.
Next to the possible destabilization and massive loss of credibility and legitimacy of the BS Aquino III presidency, the BBL is the biggest collateral damage from the massacre of at least 44 Special Action Force commandos of the Philippine National Police by a combined force of about 1,000 heavily armed rebels of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front and its terrorist arm, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).
The Jan. 25 dawn commando strike into the innards of an MILF base camp in barangay Tukanalipao, in Mamasapano town in Maguindanao province, central Mindanao was approved, ordered and personally directed by President BS Aquino himself, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
So far, faced with the biggest crisis of his presidency of four years and seven months, Aquino is oscillating between repentance and defiance. He probably wants to admit ownership of the Mamasapano project but doing so will be too late now and will, in any case, destabilize his presidency.
So Aquino has done the next best thing—defiance and denial. Those who are vociferously criticizing him for the massacre and demanding his ouster are being painted as anti-peace and anti-Muslim.
A PNP Board of Inquiry, composed of generals, his underlings, is not expected to uncover enough evidence to pin down the commander-in-chief. That BoI, by the way, should make public, online, all the affidavits (about 300 by now) it has gathered on the massacre, lest it be accused of whitewash. Affidavits are public records.
Case officer for the Mamasapanto project, dubbed Operation Wolverine in some reports, was Aquino’s long-time friend and ward, the disgraced PNP chief, Alan Purisima, suspended since Dec. 4, 2014 by the anti-graft prosecutor Ombudsman on charges of corruption.
Being suspended, General Purisima had no business ordering and commanding troops or commandos, especially an operation as high-level and as sensitive as the arrest of two of Southeast Asia’s leading terrorists, Malaysian Zulkipli Bin Hir, alias Abu Marwan, and his Filipino cohort, Abdulbasit Usman. Marwan was a member of the central committee of the dreaded Jemaah Islamiyah responsible for the 2002 Bali, Indonesia bombing that killed more than 200 people. Usman, meanwhile, is linked to nine bombing incidents in Mindanao, including the 2002 General Santos bombing that killed 15 and wounded 60.
Using intelligence gathered by the US government and Manila authorities, at dawn of Jan. 25, a team of commandos infiltrated Marwan’s house in Tukanalipao, managed to grab him but not after a firefight that resulted in the killing of eight of the SAF commandos. As this infiltration team retreated with their quarry, a second, support SAF team provided cover. The latter team accounted for most of the 44 deaths of the SAF. Happily, the first team managed to cut off one of Marwan’s fingers. Happily again, the finger managed to land into the hands of the FBI which is now trying to verify its DNA.
Unhappily, however, the operation created alarms in the town, among the MILF and BIFF fighters. The result was a carnage of unbelievable violence, cruelty and inhumanity to man. What sniper fire couldn’t finish, shooting and hacking in close combat with the wounded SAF did. The commandos were disfigured and dismembered (in line with the Muslims’ apparent belief that if a part of your body is missing, you cannot be resurrected after death), looted and stripped of their uniform, firearms, gear, personal belongings and dignity.
The massacre destroyed the fragile trust, if any, between the MILF and the government of BS Aquino. That trust led to the signing on March 27, 2014 of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) which is claimed to have ended the decades-long armed Muslim insurgency that has resulted in 200,000 deaths on both sides. The CAB effectively gives sovereignty to no more than 5 million Muslims (5 percent of the population) over an area that is 30 percent of the total national land area and waters which contain among the country’s richest marine, fisheries, mineral and forestry resources—an archipelago (Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan) that in theory can feed the entire Philippines.
Even before the Mamasapanto massacre, the wisdom and constitutionality of the BBL were already in question. The Supreme Court is widely expected to declare the CAB and its BBL unconstitutional. “Every provision and line of the draft BBL is unconstitutional,” insists lawyer Manuel Lazaro, chairman of the Philippine Constitution Association.
The draft BBL is known as House Bill 4994 in the House and is authored by 17 congressmen led by Speaker Feliciano Belmonte. It is known as Senate Bill 2408 in the Upper Chamber and is sponsored by 12 senators led by Senate President Frank Drilon.
By this time, Drilon and Belmonte, both allies of the President, should be thinking aloud whether strong-arming the BBL through Congress amid so much outrage and anger at the government, will be worth the effort. After all, Aquino has less than 17 months into his presidency.