• F-1 focuses on understanding and ‘identification of the interventions’ and policies necessary to address the root cause of protracted armed conflict’.
  

• F-2 provides the analytical framework of relevant policy directions necessary to ‘link peace and security for governance’ inclusive of political reforms and legislative action.

• F-3 breaks from economic issues to address the core political issue of ‘ideology-based armed conflicts’.
  

A few weeks ago, the option for peace in our time proffered to end the armed conflict in Mindanao through a negotiated political settlement was restrained by the Supreme Court. The ‘rule of law’ is supposed to be the embodiment of reason. But the petition for redress by the political class at national and local level has not dissolved the disruptive passions of people.

The common law ‘doctrine of frustration’ in negotiation has set in the state coercive apparatus of structural violence to meet negative violence from the Moro commanders.  By force of habit of imitation, the DILG and the PNP-AFP tandem have adopted the American posse style to mark the heads of two MILF commanders with a P25-million reward. As we discuss cases, as here, we move away in reality from the peace process instead of identifying ceasefire violations. The question is why return to the negotiating table?  The European Union has condemned the indiscriminate killing of civilians and expressed deep concern about “civilian militias becoming embroiled in the violence” and declared its worry about the potential “to inflame sectarian violence.”

There is a positive violence however attached to popular and constructive movements. Should the hostilities escalate, it will be on grounds of “self-evident truths” for freedom.  A facet of Bangsamoro assertion of “earned sovereignty” negates the self-perceived threat of “dismemberment” from a political life hardly fit for the system of human life acceptable to them.   

Yet in this country, the most corrosive impulse of a legalese regime is a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that has turned upside down the Terms of Reference (TOR) of the peace deal between the Government and the Moros. (Not unimaginable is a TRO ‘for sale’ scandal, too, in other instances.) But the aborted signing was shot through with domestic violence and vigilante violence that derailed the Government-MILF peace process.  As one commentator observed, “government has pushed out the boundaries of what’s acceptable”. We will return to this point in terms of two components of acceptance: legitimacy and justice.

But as a Muslim public intellectual, it is my duty first to examine the ideation behind the crafting of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD).  Media coverage of the events was lopsided with anti-Moro sentiment and anti-Muslim bias. The perceived “generosity” or “appeasement” has demonstrated that the discourse is often pre-empted in an open forum by so-called expert opinions.  Spin masters, too, in broadcast media and opinion editorials tend to appropriate the discourse with very little explanation of the background.  Near real time coverage of the military operation in North Cotabato, South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur has exposed the “excessive use of force” in recent weeks.

I reiterate here my point made during a multi-donor conference last year in Davao City: That development is not primarily an “economic problem” because peace and human security paradigms hinge on the dimension of political impact.  Speaking of the theme of “Learning from Peace and Development Paradigms and Practices in Mindanao” (2007) is contextual parsing in human security concepts. I at once debunk the main assumption that “continued poverty is the root cause of unpeace” in that southern island.  Measuring the value of human life against justice, root cause prevention, and the responsibility to protect from avoidable catastrophe are major issues now in foreign policy.  The ‘right to humanitarian intervention’ can no longer be denied in armed conflict situation.

Political tides may cut a peace deal many ways more than economic factors. In my view the predictors of development success are not necessarily natural resource endowment, access to capital, or mass education.  The economic dimensions of ‘war-making’ have long been overshadowed by informed analyses—e.g. as highlighted in the 2005 PHRD—both for conflict resolution and risk investment.  You know this is a political issue: how to balance the right to self-determination and contested framework of sovereignty in a highly centralized unitary structure.  In somewhat more concrete terms, our MOA-AD is not about “dismemberment” but the “entrenchment” of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE). 

A negotiated political settlement of the conflict in Mindanao addresses the very crucial element of continuing humanitarian insecurity: the birthright to true identity and true pride in a definite homeland. Psychological conduct and consent to be governed are not supposed to be unrelated.  Our memorandum for self-determination envisages a “new formula” free from any imposition to ensure success.  The political unrest of Bangsamoro people and indigenous peoples can be conceptualized as a crisis of political representation.   

• Collective discourses of the MILF leadership and cadres on its ideology-based armed struggle construct the Bangsamoro people’s birthright to identity they truly represent.
  

• Even if Moro sovereign authority is repressed or concealed, the Bangsamoro future political status is decidable by popular consultation through referendum coupled with the principle of ‘free choice’ for the Indigenous peoples.

• True pride lies in the Bangsamoro people’s narrative of ‘earned sovereign authority’ entrenched in BJE to satisfy acceptance of demographic changes in their homeland in Mindanao and its adjacent islands or territorial internal waters.
  

In mid-August 2008 The Economist observed: “In fairness, the peace agreement promises referendums in the affected districts. But even if the Supreme Court eventually lets it be signed, putting it into effect will almost certainly require change to the constitution.” But in emerging practices, modern interventionist paradigm of “re-territorialization” for human development is justified on account of state failures.  There is also a necessary “re-characterization” involved from sovereignty as control to sovereignty as responsibility for human protection purposes. 

The 2005 PHRD failed to grasp the “MILF track” because your recommendation is short of understanding the ‘territorially bounded entity’ equated with the nation.  A distinct domestic community’ of Moros is signified in the MOA-AD in order to present the rest of the Filipinos as “real”.  If those “imagined communities” made to ground sovereign authority a logic of representation should be defined in terms of the totality of associative relationship between the BJE (as a sub-state) and the GRP (as a parent state).

The political economy of armed conflict must be analyzed beyond the greed of the political class or business interest. Today for a state to be sovereign, it must find the origin of its sovereign authority in its people as the legitimate interpretive community.  Constitutional discursive strategy of writing “we the people” sees all populations as undifferentiated mass in order to politicize the concept of representation. The allocation of power in the Constitution remains within a system of “representation” but issues such as “earned sovereignty” take on the negotiability of “state rights” entrenched in ancestral domain preceding the unitary State structure of this Republic.  

The acceptance of our MOA-AD has two components: legitimacy and content. When acceptance is in doubt, legitimacy is taken for granted or it is not necessary to seek consensus. Principles of obligation are much talked about in a revolutionary tide.  Questions about content of legitimacy become tied to justification for intervention for Government’s inaction. Our MOA-AD provides for workable associative arrangements and permissible foreign policy and trade relations to avoid confusing legitimacy with justice. Negotiations to settle sovereignty-based conflict are unlikely to succeed without third party facilitation implemented with international monitoring.

Does it matter if Government disowned the initialed MOA-AD at the instance of the Opposition and local officials?  Scrapping the eleven-year-old GRP-MILF peace talks and disavowing to sign ‘in any form’ the MOA-AD overturn the interim mechanisms for making minds meet. This first message is simple realism to fix in the public mind what took three years and eight-months to negotiate as trade-offs presently tangled with controversy. Ambiguity in crafting this legal framework is the glue that binds the GRP and MILF negotiating panels to write together the Comprehensive Compact.

If the onus is on Government to accept the peace deal, then it is fair to demand now for a Protocol to guarantee its compliance with the final act.  The prevalence of bad faith in peace talks is the second message.  Because military offensive distorts the reality, war hysteria can lead to ‘conscience-shocking situations’ and defense deficit spending. Shared legitimate grievances among the Bangsamoro people in turn feed on the mentality of ‘ungovernable territory’ rather than lawlessness or terrorism. It is as much concerned with distortive election results that are blamed on ordinary Muslims. Sorting out that formative and deformative power of full autonomous existence is the dominant consideration in our memorandum of self-determination. That is why this MOA-AD is an “elegant formula” rather than a caricature of Islamic peril to this largely Catholic country. 

Certainly one of the most difficult issues in the raw interplay of power relates to DDR, shorthand for: disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of local security forces. By shifting to DDR, Government runs the grave risk of navigating a timeframe for transition process beyond the benchmarks of legitimacy.

I now coin D to mean Disarm, D to Disown, and R to Reject. It should go without saying that rejection encourages option to secede. The decades of the 1970s under martial rule witnessed numerous IDPs who have not returned but still harbor humiliation (and alienation). All that said, by joint understanding, the mechanism of entrenchment for purposes of giving effect to a transition has a defined function in the MOA-AD framework that is essential for preparatory work on the future status negotiations as the end in sight.

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Datu Michael O. Mastura, a lawyer and senior member of the MILF peace panel, is also chair of the Advocacy committee of the MILF peace panel. He  presented this at the public forum GRP-Moro Conflict: Is there an end in sight? Human Security and Human Development Revisited, held on September 19, 2009, 2-5pm at the UP School of Economics Auditorium, a project of the HDN and sponsored by the UNDP).