The costs of the Bangsamoro Basic Law
The controversy over the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), following the brutality displayed by the counter-party during the Mamasapano Massacre, has hogged the news for the past few weeks. There has been understandably much emotion surrounding the passage of the law and there are facts and matters that have been taken out of context that fuel the controversy.
Among the most controversial features of the law are the financial costs involved to achieve “peace in Mindanao.” There is the persistent view that the Bangsamoro will receive the flabbergasting amount of P75 billion annually as part of the BBL. Actually, the amount, according to documents prepared by the government, is “only” P35 billion for the first year.
This “only” amount consists of:
• About P27 billion for the recurring
Annual Block grant to be taken from the net national internal revenue collection of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which is expressed as a percentage of such annual collection (4%);
• Another P7 billion Special Development Fund which reduces to P2 billion
each succeeding year, ad infinitum; and
• P1 billion for the transition costs going into the Bangsamoro government.
Among the additional features of the BBL that create additional controversy and which may be ruled unconstitutional is the feature that the President should appoint a Bangsamoro representative to each of the major cabinet posts and that the President should name at least one of the Supreme Court justices from among those recommended by the Bangsamoro.
There is additional concern that the Bangsamoro police will constitute a private army of the Bangsamoro, which could be used in the future for fomenting rebellion and/ or other criminal activities similar to the conversion by the infamous Ampatuan clan of the police forces of Maguindanao to be their private law enforcers and official hatchet men.
The argument posited by the government in its defense is that the Bangsamoro police will be an integral part of the Philippine National Police and the administrative control of the National Police Commission.
There is much to be gleaned from official government documents defending the passage of the BBL. Principal among these is that the BBL will achieve peace in Mindanao. After studied analysis of the BBL and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Law, it is my conclusion that this is the same dog with a different, albeit more expensive collar.
Far more of concern is the slogan that the BBL will achieve peace in Mindanao.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as the guns will not fall silent and we will have spent nearly P40 billion of our precious tax money to achieve minimal results. This is so because the government mistakenly believes that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is the majority cause of unrest and violence in Mindanao. To achieve widespread peace, the Government should negotiate with other more violent groups like the Abu Sayyaf, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Front, the Jemaah Islamiyah and dozens of other armed groups and bandits that infest Western Mindanao and Sulu. To compound the situation, documents and treaties mean nothing when the major determinants of an agreement should be based on kinship and religion among men of goodwill.
There have been ample situations where these violent forces have combined, as in Mamasapano and in Basilan, which resulted in deaths and mutilations of our law enforcers.
It is not a sign of goodwill when, despite video evidence to support warrants of arrest, the MILF leadership has indicated that they will not surrender the criminals among their ranks who participated in the massacre.
At the end of the day, the Bangsamoro Basic Law is an exercise in futility -- it cannot and will not ever guarantee that the guns will fall silent in the troubled areas in Mindanao, as the agreements, particularly the decommissioning of weapons of the MILF, will result in another farcical effort with the surrender only of the oldest, most obsolete and rusted weapons, as what happened with the Moro National Liberation Front prior to the establishment of the ARMM. Further, there is no official roster of the combatants covered by the MILF as they have legions of “lost commands.”
The amounts we have been willing to put up to finance the BBL are best deployed in setting up state of the art hospitals in Western and Central Mindanao, financing the establishment of more schools and universities and strengthening our armed forces and police who stake their lives daily armed with obsolete or defective guns and ammunition.
There have been ample situations where these violent forces have combined, as in Mamasapano and in Basilan, which resulted in deaths and mutilations of our law enforcers.