The bones in our body and the tissues within such as tendons, ligaments and cartilage that connect them comprise our skeletal system.
Our bones provide support for our body. Without this, our body would collapse into a heap. Bones also provide the structure for muscles to attach so that our bodies are able to move.
This brings us back to our science classes in high school where we tackle the human body.
Few weeks ago, the President signed Republic Act (RA) 10153 which seeks to postpone the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections that will supposedly take place this August 8.
When House Bill (HB) 4146 was introduced in the halls of Congress, talks about the ARMM elections in particular and the ARMM in general have surfaced.
Several issues and concerns were raised by both the government and Muslim Mindanaoans why said regional election should push through or not.
ARMM stakeholders who oppose it on one side and the national government that supports it on the other have their own reasons on the pushing back of the ARMM elections.
I humbly offer a comparative look on two contrasting views to come up with a report of the pros and cons of the said move.
At the outset, I share the sentiment that ARMM and Mindanao’s growth is part and parcel of Philippine development. Whatever happens to this region has a direct effect to those who live in Metro Manila and the central government. All of us should accept the fact that “our shoulder bone is connected to our hip bone”.
Raissa Robles, a blogger, wrote that Metro Manila has a stake in ARMM’s success.
In her blog, she shared, “(S)ure, Mindanao is quite far from Manila but the stock market in Manila crashes whenever a bomb explodes there. And at times, Muslim rebels bring their rage to Manila.
The simmering conflict in the south has prevented the country from developing and prospering as much as its Asian neighbors. For God’s sake, we are the only Asian country with two internal conflicts and two groups named in the world terrorist watch list.
A lot of refugees from the simmering Mindanao conflict are crowding in Metro Manila.
Finally, it’s also all about justice. A real war consumed Mindanao right after President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law. A war with tanks and cannons, and bombs dropping on the civilian population. Somewhat like what’s happening in Libya right now.”
Is RA 10153 a honest-to-goodness law that will, in the long run, help the ARMM achieve its purpose or it is but a politically-motivated government action?
In Malacanang, President Benigno Aquino III stressed the government’s all-out effort in curbing the irregularities in governance in ARMM and thanked administration allies in Congress for the passage of the law, saying that the new measure would serve as proof of the cooperation of the legislative and executive branches of government.
Aquino said RA 10153 was aimed at allowing the real voice of the people to be heard and put a halt to the unscrupulous acts of some political clans during elections.
“We will end the reign of political clans who lead election cheating,” the President said.
He added that a reformative roadmap for the region would be applied by the Department of the Interior and Local Government to make sure that the rule of law would prevail during the electoral process in the region.
On the other hand, fifty one (51%) of respondents in the First Quarter 2011Survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) on people’s opinion on the postponement of the ARMM elections were against postponement, 24% in favor and 24% undecided.
In Mindanao, 47% agreed, 25% disagreed while 28% were undecided. In the National Capital Region, 56% agreed, 25% disagreed,19% were undecided; in the rest of Luzon, 52% agreed, 21% disagreed and 27% were undecided. In the Visayas, 53% agreed, 29% disagreed while 18% disagreed.
Senator Chiz Escudero, one of those who opposed the measure, said that “the essence of election in democracies is that “it is not about who is good and who is not, but if a person is voted by the people, he or she will serve government”.
He also said that previous failures in the ARMM and the attendant violence in elections should not be used as an argument for the postponement of the exercise.
The intention of the administration sounds good but the main question as to the legality of the said law was thrown back at the corridors of power. Does the end justify the means?
Those who support Malacanang’s stance said that is an exercise of the residual powers of the President to appoint Officers-in-Charge (OICs). Aquino found an ally in Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago who said that it is constitutional for Congress to pass a bill postponing the ARMM elections to 2013.
“The rules of constitutional construction provide that we must harmonize the principle of synchronization on the one hand, with the principle of local autonomy on the other hand,” she said in a statement.
Santiago said synchronization and local autonomy are in pari materia, meaning that they cover the same subject and are therefore equal in weight.
She said that if Congress were to be prohibited from passing a bill on synchronized elections, there would be no agency left to legislate on synchronized elections, thus creating a vacuum.
The senator said that when the Constitution enumerates the legislative powers of ARMM, and the enumeration does not include synchronization, the conclusion is that synchronization is vested in Congress.
Santiago also cited cases, particularly the 1991 case of Menzon v. Petilla, where the Supreme Court ruled that vacant public offices should be filled by the President in the exercise of his residual powers, although she qualified that he exercised the executive power of presidential appointment.
According to a news report, House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman asserted that “all of the constitutional and statutory safeguards for autonomy in ARMM have been violated and derogated by RA 10153.”
He said RA 10153 has fatal infirmities such as the violation of the constitutional guaranty of elective and representative regional officials in ARMM with the deferment of elections for almost two years and the installation of OICs; unconstitutional expansion of the President’s limited power of general supervision over ARMM officials to the more potent power of control which is inherent in the appointment and dismissal of OICs; failure of the Senate to garner a two-thirds vote which is required by the Organic Act, as amended, to make valid the amendments introduced in RA 10153.
Lagman said that Malacanang failed to provide for the holding of the mandatory plebiscite for the ratification of the amendments contained in RA 10153; denied the right of suffrage to ARMM voters for a long period in violation of the safeguard on periodic and popular elections; and setting aside of the holdover of incumbents until their successors are elected and qualified as provided for in the Organic Act, as amended, in order to give way to OICs.
Another question posed on the Act was centered on the on-going peace process. Would the synchronization be beneficial to the ARMM residents and would not delay or disrupt the work of the peace negotiating panel? Is this position tenable?
Representatives who pushed for the postponement of the ARMM election also cite in their explanatory note that the move to postpone is “beneficial to the peace process and is in fact supported by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) because both groups want to prioritize the resolution of peace issues by the government; MNLF’s demand for a full implementation of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement that would result to amendments of the Organic Act and MILF’s demand for leverage for a definitive timetable for the talks to achieve a significant breakthrough.”
The Mindanao Alliance for Peace (MAP) and the Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society (CBCS) also expressed their support for HB 4146.
“We support HB 4146 to give time to President P-Noy in laying down the mechanisms to facilitate the incorporation of possible outcome of the negotiations both by the GPH-MNLF and GPH-MILF, Nasser Kasan, one of the convenors of MAP, the groups said.
That pushing through with the polls “may mar the ongoing peace talks with the insurgent groups which can disrupt and worsen the peace and security situation in the region.”
Those who are against this Act said that what will worsen the peace and security situation in the ARMM is any act of the central government that is perceived as an interference in matters that relate to the internal affairs of the region like postponing its elections by mandate of the former. Or of the central government’s toying with what the ARMM law already provides.
In addition, Fr. Eliseo Mercardo Jr., executive director of the Institute of Autonomy and Governance, has questioned that premise, saying there is no guarantee that the government and MILF could reach any final peace agreement in two years.
Suara Bangsamoro’s Amirah Lidasan said the grant of autonomy to Muslim Filipinos came in response initially to the armed struggle for self-determination by the MNLF which was formed after the President’s father, Senator Benigno Aquino exposed the 1968 Jabidah Massacre before the Senate.
She said “colluding” with Congress on an undemocratic proposition to appoint OICs in ARMM is “illogical, immoral and illegal” and reminiscent of strongman President Ferdinand Marcos’ “rubber stamp” legislature.
Many share the view that appointing OICs who will serve until the synchronized local and national elections in May 2013 would invite subservient leadership of regional appointed officials and the ARMM will be under the direct control of the President. Here are the arguments of both sides.
The President underscored the need for the ARMM OICs to share his vision of good governance and reform to the people in the region.
“Of course, vision is important, we should have the same vision, those who would not perpetrate the system that they had gotten used to in ARMM,” Aquino said.
“So that means they should be focused in delivering basic services due to them (ARMM residents),” the President told reporters after signing the bill.
The President reiterated his position that it was in the best interest of the people in ARMM to have an OIC who had no intention to run in the 2013 election, so that he could concentrate on reforming the region in the next two years.
The usual practice, according to the President, are ARMM officials engaging in rampant corruption, compromising the quality of education and health care and ultimately the lives of people in the region.
Former Senator Aquilino Pimentel said they will also challenge the President's right to appoint officers-in-charge for the 26 soon-to-be vacated seats in the region.
"The appointment of OICs cuts to the very heart of the right of the people to elect their leaders," he said, adding that incumbent officials were previously allowed to stay when the ARMM polls were postponed in the past.
According to the Healing Democracy group, delaying the elections in ARMM and authorizing Malacañang to appoint OICs of the ARMM is a move that undermines democracy and disregards the democratic right of the people of ARMM to choose their own leaders.
“Lest the Aquino administration forget, the foundation of democracy is that it is ‘the rule of law and not of men’ that prevails. The Aquino administration argues that the postponement will institute reforms on the war-torn region, “a failed experiment” as his top aides call it. That the ARMM is being singled out as a bastion of election lawlessness is clearly prejudicial,” it said.
Reacting to Malacañang’s assertions that postponing the polls will help clean the process of corruption, the group said it was unfair that the ARMM was being singled-out.
“There are estimated to be 152 private armies at the behest of local politicians; vote buying, corruption, and other electoral ills are prevalent all over the country. The urgency of electoral reform should be propagated not with respect to ARMM alone but to the entire country. If this government is serious in instituting reforms and ending lawlessness in ARMM, it must get its priorities straight. Disband the private armies and institute effective safeguards to promote clean, honest, and orderly elections. Lawlessness must not be used as a pretext to act above what the law demands. If anything, lawlessness must prompt a reaffirmation of the law. And the law says explicitly that any postponement of the election must be ratified by the ARMM electorate, not by presidential fiat or congressional enactment,” it said.
Representatives from various groups signed a manifesto saying postponing the polls and will further weaken the Moro peoples’ expression of self-determination. They said delaying the elections was all about political payback, and not about implementing genuine reform.
In the light of Mindanao’s socio-economic milieu, the delay in the ARMM elections would be good for poverty, literacy and education efforts of the administration. Is this true?
The government is of the opinion that by “setting concrete targets that can be achieved by 2013 and are to be pursued by the elected officials through 2016, the ARMM may be able to lower its poverty incidence and improve literacy pursuant to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of the Philippines.”
Pimentel said this is a lot of nonsense. He asked, since when has the attainment of the MDG of the country been dependent on postponing elections set by law?
The MDG may be achieved by suitable people elected by the electorate in elections held in accordance with democratic processes. The people must be allowed to exercise that power to elect their leaders as provided by law so that they may support them in the pursuit of the MDG. No one, not even the president, can say in a democratic setting that he knows better than the people who should govern them.
Also, those who favor the Act said that in two years, “the introduction of reforms can initiate the transformation of ARMM into the self-determining unit as envisioned by the Constitution which will hopefully continue upon the election of its officials in 2013.”
But this was not acceptable to Muslim youth groups that believe the Act is just a pipe dream that will only enable those close to Malacanang to wield power for their own purposes rather than for the good of the people of the ARMM. The appointment of ARMM officials in the aftermath of postponing the elections set by law would be an undemocratic retrogressive step that will radicalize the people of the region who as of now believe in resolving their differences through the electoral process under the rule of law.
Many believe that the Moro youths would find themselves alienated by the move to postpone the ARMM elections and in the process, they’d be more inclined to use other means than the law to pursue the just aspirations of the Moro people.
The legal and constitutional bases presented by both sides of the fence have also resulted in the burning issue of local autonomy.
The vote in the House of Representatives to postpone the elections is 191 for, 47 against, two abstentions and 43 absent. In Mindanao, it is 42-14-2-6 and in the ARMM itself, it is 3-4-1-0. It is still the majority deciding over the “autonomous” minority but shouldn’t it be the ARMM Legislative Assembly (ARMMLA) deciding on the issue of postponement if at all it would push for postponement?
Pimentel said that ideally, the initiative to postpone the elections should be the ARRM’s prerogative through the ARMMLA. After all, the ARMMLA is the autonomous region’s lawmaking body. And the elections determine the will of the people of ARMM. In a democracy that is how the will of the people is decided – through elections. In Constitutional terms, sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them. To change the dates of the ARMM elections is a matter that should be left to its people. The political principle of subsidiarity should apply here – what the smaller unit of government can do or ought to do should not be done by the bigger unit, that is, the central government.
In defending its position on the ARMM elections, Malacañang said the ARMM is a “failed state?”
Pimentel said that Malacañang – especially the predecessor of the incumbent president – contributed immensely to the inability of the ARMM to achieve the ends set for it by the two ARMM laws – the first and the amendatory legislations.
To begin with, the ARMM is not a state. It is and was meant to be an autonomous region where the just aspirations of the Moro peoples and the Lumads may be given full play.
As for the peace process, there is much more to be done than just mouthing that past peace pacts were not implemented.
I suggest that for peace to be achieved in Mindanao, the government must have a concrete, comprehensive and constitutionally viable peace formula that will address the just demands of the Moro peoples.
That formula, in my mind, is for the country to be converted into a Federal Republic and where the Moros would have a federal state of their own.
By enabling them to run their own region as a federal state, that would not only dissipate the causes of Moro unrest but would also hasten the economic development of the region and of the rest of the country that would also be “federalized”.
In general, the government and the opposition agree that there is a real need to integrate Mindanao in the country’s economic and ecological landscape to maximize the region’s full potential.
Reports say that the Mindanao economy outgrew the rest of the Philippine economy by more than three times in 2009? Through the years, Mindanao’s economic growth has kept pace with and occasionally exceeded the country’s overall economic growth, proving that our southern regions could very well be the vanguard of our national economy in the years ahead. And indeed, it is well positioned to do so, having an extraordinary endowment of natural wealth in various forms, on land and in the waters, more than other parts of the country.
According to former National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) chief Cielito Habito “(T)he age-old lament about Mindanao is that there had not been a unified Mindanao economy to speak of in the past. What it had was a fragmented economy whose progressive growth centers (particularly the cities of Cagayan de Oro, Cotabato, Davao, General Santos and Zamboanga) lacked meaningful links among one another. Instead, each had stronger links with Manila and Cebu in a vertical nucleus-satellite relationship. While this has changed in the last 15 years with improved infrastructure interconnecting these centers, there remains great scope for improvement. As Mindanao looks to its economic future in the next two decades, attaining a unified and integrated economy should be an overriding goal.
He stressed that the Mindanao 2020 Peace and Development Framework Plan, the new blueprint charting Mindanao’s path for the next 20 years (i.e., covering 2011-2030), seeks to achieve precisely that. The Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) spearheaded a participatory planning process in coming up with Mindanao 2020, which was nearly two years in the making. That time was spent bringing together various stakeholders and Mindanao-based planning officers from national government agencies and local governments, in working sessions all over Mindanao. MinDA thus believes that Mindanao 2020 finds wide ownership and support from the very objects of the plan, who can also be considered its authors: the people of Mindanao themselves. And because the blueprint embodies their expressed aspirations, the thrusts and strategies embodied therein must be responsive to Mindanaoans’ true needs.
At the end of the day, the over-arching goal that government needs to address and to ensure is that the components and actors of an electoral process will play its part in a clean, honest and peaceful elections in ARMM in 2013.
In a statement, Malacanang said that the law said apart from upholding the Constitution and reflecting the ideals of true democracy, the synchronization of ARMM elections was a first step towards ensuring sustainable peace and stability in the region.
“The synchronization will also allow for the time and opportunity to implement urgent and much-needed reforms in ARMM regional elections will be free, credible, peaceful and genuinely reflective of the people’s will,” Aquino said.
Mindanews, a leading newspaper in Mindanao, quoting Pimentel et al, wrote that some of the more immediately perceptible causes of the inability of the ARMM to achieve its goals are:
1. A corrupt Comelec structure that allowed massive electoral cheating in the region.
2. A corrupted military structure that in the words of Senator Trillanes and his followers when they “rebelled” against the government that sold Armed Forces’ weapons and ammunitions to rebel groups.
3. A corrupted political bureaucracy that assured warlords in the region to enjoy impunity by aligning themselves with the past president – as some of them are now trying to do with the incumbent president.
They also said postponement will “enable the Commission on Elections to institute electoral reforms such as purging of the voter’s list and biometrics’ voters’ registration” and that the expenses supposed for the elections “may instead be funneled to support the reforms to be introduced in the region.”
Pimentel however stressed that the Comelec, itself, has issued public statements that it is ready to conduct the elections. Indeed, there is a need to cleanse the process but there are devices in law that can be used to do so without postponing the elections. For example, challenging voters who are ineligible to vote in the precincts. And purging Comelec officials seen to be instruments of mass corruption of the electoral process in the ARMM.
Other reforms may be instituted without reference to the actual holding or non-holding of the ARMM elections.
As for the money that will be used to conduct the ARMM elections, that is already provided by law and is according to the Comelec available for that purpose.
Discussion on the legal, socio-economic and political aspects as well as peace talks, local autonomy and other major concerns of RA 10153 only goes to show that ARMM, the rescheduled elections and Mindanao are three very important subjects of today that deserve a second look of its various stakeholders, whether they belong to the administration or to the opposition. An intelligent debate on the matter will surely enlighten all of us and will enable us to have a new thrust, a better vision and a broader perspective for a progressive Mindanao.
Going back to the premise I have noted in the beginning, the ARMM, more than the putting off of the scheduled polls, is integral to the growth and development the Philippines and its citizens want to achieve in the near future. It is one of the set of bones that comprises the many bones that support the body, as the country is a sum of all of its parts.
It is our ARMM bone that is connected to our knee bone…
ayek/07.07.11
