A final push for BBL

We are near the final leg of reforming and updating the autonomy parameters for Muslim Mindanao through the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law.

It is very likely President Duterte will sign the BBL just hours before his Sona, right after the Senate and House ratify the bicameral conference committee report in the morning. That is the necessary formality. The final form of the BBL will probably be printed next week.

I step forward to express the reassurances of the caring residents of Iligan City, neighbors of Marawi, to all Mindanaoan and all Filipinos.

The BBL is now on record as one of the most meticulously examined, written, and rewritten pieces of legislation ever to go through Congress. There is no such thing as a perfect bill or law.

BBL was crafted by a 17th Congress fully aware of the previous constitutional challenges hurled at earlier attempts to reform the ARMM and address ancestral domain issues. Congress did its homework and did what it could for the BBL.

I appeal to those who remain unsatisfied by the provisions of the BBL to at the very least give this BBL a chance to work in the first years of birth pains. Please do not be hasty in prejudging the BBL.

There may even be some individuals and quarters who are lurking in the shadows just waiting to challenge the constitutionality of the BBL before the Supreme Court at the soonest possible time. Maybe, some will not even wait for the ink of President Duterte’s signature to dry.

That is most unfair, not just to Congress or to the negotiators of past and current administrations who negotiated with the MILF and consulted with other Filipino Muslim sectors, but to all Filipino Muslims many of whom are not just in Mindanao but are also in Luzon and the Visayas.

If and when the BBL is challenged before the Supreme Court, I ask the justices, as early as now, to exercise prudence by declining or dismissing the cases for lack of jurisdiction, lack of justiciable cause, or because the subject matter are political questions beyond the competence of the Court to decide.

If the Court chooses to rule on the cases, I am confident the core, essential provisions of the BBL will remain intact. REP. FREDERICK W. SIAO Lone District of Iligan City W HOEVER put up that “Welcome to the Philippines, province of China” banners in major streets in Metro Manila must have thought it funny. It was not.

It was an insult to Filipino independence and the Philippine government that two years ago won a ruling from the international arbitration tribunal in The Hague that declared as invalid China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said the red banners, complete with Chinese flag and Chinese characters, were the work of enemies of the government of President Rodrigo Duterte. He said they were “traitors” of the nation.

But leftist personalities critical of Duterte’s close relations with China denied any part in it and said they did not have the money to print and put up those tarpaulins.

To determine who were responsible for the banners, find out what it takes to print them and have them up those walkways. Analyze the message and determine who stands to benefit from promoting it. The banners were found Thursday I F a prostitute were mistaken for a politician, would he or she cry, “Foul”? Or shrug off the slip as just hairsplitting?

The recent incident over a public official charged for misconduct stemmed when the official, a woman, verbally and physically assaulted hotel employees who mistook her for her male companion’s “escort.”

In the official’s own statements, the euphemism “escort” was replaced with the Cebuano slang for a sex worker, “pokpok.”

In street talk, the Cebuano word is often accompanied by or substituted with an index finger tapping a surface twice to mimic the sexual act of penetration.

While “escort” attempts to neutralize the negativity clinging to the world’s “oldest” profession, “pokpok” abandons the pretense. It is gutter talk, which, by treating the sex worker as an object to be penetrated, diminishes and degrades the person underneath the label.

In keeping with pejorative language, “pokpok” spares the customer, who completes the transaction. In the cultural superstructure, a line is drawn between the women deserving of respect and the rest.

I sensed this in the 1980s, when I was a young non-government worker traveling for the first time to Thailand with a co-worker. We were “escorting” a public school teacher, who wrote a prize-winning essay, to visit women’s groups in Bangkok and Chiang Mai.