All the Philippines is our land

Bangsamoro Transition Commission chair Ghazali Jaafar recently aired his sentiments, saying political leaders in Mindanao must sacrifice their own interests in order to end decades of strife in the restive South.

This plea comes amid tensions flaring ahead of the scheduled plebiscite for the creation of a new Bangsamoro government and territory.

Jaafar was quoted as saying over an ANC TV interview that he does not know why they (Mindanao political leaders) cannot sacrifice their political interests for the general interest of our people, adding the Bangsamoro people received “overwhelming support” from the public for the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) that grants greater fiscal and political power in a new autonomous region in Mindanao.

Close to three million people are expected to take part in the historic 21 January plebiscite to ratify the BOL, created in 2014 as part of a peace deal between the government and the Philippines’ largest Muslim separatist group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

“The Bangsamoro issue is all about the legitimate desire of the Bangsamoro people to have a government that they can govern… a government which guarantees the rights of every citizen in that area, and a government that will bring in peace with dignity and justice,” Jaafar said.

This is pure bullsh*t. Why should the Moros be given a government only their leaders can govern, when we already have duly constituted governments via democratic elections? Why should that not be enough for the Muslims who are and should be known as Filipinos?

Should the Visayans then also have their own government and territory and be funded by the entire Filipino taxpayers? Should Manila and Luzon also have their own governments and territory and damn the Constitution and the Republic?

Hey Jaafar, our Filipino forefathers from Mindanao, Visayas, Luzon and Metro Manila fought the colonizers and shed blood and finally obtained their independence and our land back. The ancestral lands are all ours, as Filipinos. It should also be asked of Jaafar and his Bangsamoro group that they, the supposed MILF leaders, sacrifice their interests in order to end decades of strife in Mindanao, especially since the MILF and its former partner, the BIFF and, yes, the other Muslim terrorists, local and foreign, have always engaged in violence, the killings, the illegal armed groups that caused the decades of strife in the south.

From one’s point of view, the MILF leaders were always out for power and never peace, unless they were granted the power and territory they claim to have been owned by their ancestors. They hardly ever identified themselves as Filipinos, and it is almost certain that, as time goes by, with the MILF leaders in power and position, and with their territory, the MILF, as yet another armed force that now will probably be granted its own territory and governmental power, will not rest at merely being an autonomous region, but an independent nation and country that will demand and fight for independence.

Independence has always been their aim and it will not only be just the autonomous region that will be theirs — should the plebiscite be clean — but definitely, the MILF “government” and its leaders will want the entire Mindanao as their claimed “ancestral land,” and the Philippines will have been stripped of its legitimate territory, leaving only Luzon and the Visayas, which was never what the 1987 Constitution has ordained for the Filipino people.

What has been ordained and ratified by the Filipino people is the creation of just the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR).

What this means is that the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (BAR) has not been constitutionally ordained by Filipinos. That in turn means that a constitutional provision cannot be amended by a mere congressional law establishing the creation of the BAR to replace that which constitutionally exists as the ARMM.

The plebiscite that is to be voted upon — and unconstitutionally, too — will merely have the participation of some residents in the area that has been carved out for the probable BAR. The entire Filipino electorate has been barred by that BAR law from participating in the plebiscite, despite the fact that it was the entire Filipino electorate that ratified the 1987 Constitution that carried the ARMM and CAR provisions.

The reason that the electorate from Metro Manila, Luzon and the Visayas has been excluded is due to the fact that those from these areas would bring about a resounding “No” vote for the creation of the BAR.

If one thinks this is the only problem, one should have another big think.

The BAR law mandates a pure parliamentary government for the Bangsamoro people, headed by a chief minister (who otherwise would serve as prime minister), which puts the Moro chief minister virtually on equal footing with the President of the Philippines style-wise. That’s the first step of these armed Muslim rebels, who will not even give up their arms, to assert independence from the existing government and get tens of billions from all Filipino taxpayers to boot!

The Moro leaders should be the ones sacrificing instead of their asking Filipinos to sacrifice to stave off strife in Mindanao.

These Moro armed rebels have killed too many of our soldiers and policemen and massacred them and have even stolen our land!