Secession dead in the water
Let me start this column today with an attempt to understand a little bit of the concept called SECESSION in relation to sovereignty. This is a topic that is buried so deep in the pages of our history that even a septuagenarian, like me, has faint recollection of it. Yes, there were secessionist movements one of which was led by Hadji Kamlon shortly after the United States of America granted our independence in 1946 and the others being the Muslim Independence Movements in 1967 and the Moro National Liberation Front of Nur Misuari in 1968.
I felt the urgency to revisit the concept of sedition and retrieve it from our dusty files because it, somehow, has suddenly resurrected. Our country has indeed been seemingly stirred up lately by this word. In its political context secession (from something) is the fact of an area or group becoming independent from the country. It refers to the act of becoming independent and no longer part of a state.
Here is a brief perspective of sovereignty. A cursory reading of international law tells us that a sovereign state has a permanent population, defined territory, a government not under another, and the capacity to interact with other states. It is commonly understood that a sovereign state, like the Philippines, is independent. The concept of sovereignty is crucial for the functioning of our state. It is carefully framed within the Constitution. As a sovereign state, the Philippines has the highest authority over its territories, namely Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
It is on this point that secession is anathema to sovereignty. Sovereignty is one, indivisible and inalienable. Because “to secede” means, in its simplest term, “to break away from something”, it can never be a subject of any legislation. Secession cannot be written into a law. Sovereignty and secession cannot be placed in one law. No statute can be written allowing secession. In fact, there is no constitution (that I have read) that contains any provision on secession. Why? This is because, theoretically speaking, if territorial sovereignty is broken, as when a part of a state’s territory breaks away, it destroys the state itself.
There was a report that former president Rodrigo Duterte had urged the people in Mindanao to sign a paper that would secede Mindanao from the Philippine Republic. We have said above that there is no law authorizing secession by signing any paper to secede. That is why retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio described the Duterte call as baseless and contemptible. In fact, if indeed it is true that the former president urged Mindanaoans to sign such paper to secede, he may be held liable for violation of the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, or worse to an act of sedition.
our Criminal Law books, the crime of sedition is committed by “persons who rise publicly in order to attain by xxx other means outside of legal methods xxx to prevent the national government from freely exercising its functions xxx.” In layman’s language, sedition is a crime against the state. It is a crime of creating a revolt, disturbance, or violence against lawful civil authority with the intent to cause its overthrow or destruction.
Unfortunately for Duterte, the top leaders among our brother Muslims have rebuffed him even before the ink that recorded his unpatriotic call had dried up. While BARMM chief minister Ahod Ebrahim, Cotabato Governor Emmylou Taliño Mendoza, and the MNLF’s vice chairman for political affairs, Bangsamoro parliament member Romeo Sema, shunned the former president in respectable language, their statements put a quick end to Duterte’s exhortation. Secession is dead.