Senatoriables: Muslim perspective

Hardly had the administration finished announcing its 2024 senatorial slate were the air lanes, digital and print media filled with a barrage of reactions. The most telling was from a progressive group which, true to form, decried the slate as a dynastic pack.

From their perspective, it was business as usual, more of the same families without much change in the status quo that ensnared us into the morass of mediocrity, stagnation, if not political, economic and social misery. The announcement was like a rock thrown into a cesspool of political and structural maladies.

The scene flashed back memories of the public consultations on the draft Local Government Code of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao which addressed the same issue — the anti-dynasty provision. This was debated intensely in public fora, social media chatrooms and coffee shops in Morolandia.

It spiked the interest of Moros because a dynasty is a political system well-entrenched in most, if not all, local political units in the region. It ruffled feathers of the dynasts who had wielded political power in the region for decades.

Scholars in politics and government were likewise interested in light of research findings by known academics that dynasties were a principal factor for the poverty and snail-paced, if not the deficit of, progress of local government units.

In the deliberations of the Bicameral Conference Committee, the so-called Third House of Congress, the anti-dynasty provision was scrapped, leaving the matter to the BARMM government to decide.

Retaining the provision would have been a probable flashpoint between the leaders of the government of the day in BARMM and the incumbent regional political titans.

It would mean the die was cast. It would have been a head-on clash of epic proportions that would result in either the status quo or political and other progressive reforms. It would have shifted the battleground from a “cold war to an open war.”

Has the BARMM leadership now developed enough political clout and moxie to challenge the status quo? Who do you think will blink in the looming OK Corral-like duel of ideas in the hustings?

Whatever happens will create an epic ripple of influence on the future of the nascent autonomous government still in its infancy and just learning to walk on its feet.

Dynasty has became an abjured term that connotes anything but the ideal. Well, blame the dynasts for its twisted abjection. As we said during our juvenile days: don’t blame the range, blame the cowboys and injuns.

I recall having shared shreds of my thoughts on the subject in past articles which drew both applause and applesauce.

But how does another section of Philippine society look at it from its historical tunnel lens ‑— the Muslim perspective?

Allow me to scrape from the bottom of my memory barrel. To quote my earlier words:

“Representing the Mayor’s League of Lanao del Sur, being its president, lawyer Dimnatang Jimmy Pansar, al-hadj, made a pitch against the anti-dynasty provision. The antipathy toward the said provision was written in most of the faces of the local executives present in the public consultation, which was understandable given the fact that they were beneficiaries of the political quirk. He made a strong opinionated and animated argument presenting histories of early Muslim dynasties starting from the Prophet Muhammad, PBUH and after His death followed by the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ottoman etc., including the dynasty of the House of Saud. Nearer to home, he cited the generational dynasts Lee Kuan Yee of Singapore and Najib Razak of Malaysia. To the members of the Parliament who were Muslim clerics, he called them out by saying the religion did not prohibit dynasties and there was no solid basis to flag it down.”

This provision was a test of the mettle of the Members of the Bangsamoro Parliament. Would they maintain the provision despite the strong headwinds and repercussions in future hustings that would pit the present BARMM leadership against the impregnable dynasties that wield the so-called “command votes” during elections?

This column recalls that the anti-dynasty provision appeared in the draft of the Bangsamoro Organic Law. But on the eleventh hour it was deleted and left to the parliament to decide.

Methinks that whatever system will provide salam or peace to the ummah Islamiyah and open opportunities to better their lives is sanctioned by Islam.

amb_mac_lanto@yahoo.com