“We have not given up what we used to fight for. It is simply to demonstrate our full commitment to fulfilling our obligations and responsibilities in the peace agreement we signed with the government.”
— Ahod “Al Haj Murad” Ebrahim,
MILF chairman and former BARMM
interim chief minister,
on the decommissioning
of MILF combatants, 2019
SEPTEMBER is National Peace Consciousness Month in the Philippines. This year, it could hardly have arrived at a more consequential moment for the Bangsamoro.
On Sept. 14, Bangsamoro voters are expected to elect members of their first regular parliament. After decades of armed struggle, years of negotiations, peace agreements, the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) and repeated postponements of its first parliamentary elections, the Bangsamoro people are finally approaching the ballot box.
That alone is worth celebrating during Peace Month.
Murad Ebrahim’s words above remind us, however, that peace did not mean abandoning the aspirations that brought the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) into armed struggle. It meant pursuing those aspirations differently. The battlefield gave way to the negotiating table; negotiation produced institutions; and those institutions must now submit themselves to the judgment of voters.
Perhaps, this is the more difficult test of peace.
Events of the past few weeks demonstrate how difficult that transition can be.
Interim Chief Minister Abdulraof “Sammy Gambar” Macacua has been removed as chief of staff of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, the armed wing of the MILF. His differences with the MILF leadership have been apparent for some time. Yet Macacua remains the BARMM’s interim chief minister.
This creates an extraordinary situation days before the elections. The person heading the Bangsamoro regional government and the leadership of the revolutionary organization from which that government historically emerged no longer necessarily represents a single center of authority.
It is tempting to regard such division as evidence that the peace process is unraveling. That conclusion may be premature.
Revolutionary movements depend heavily on unity, discipline and organizational loyalty. Democracies institutionalize disagreement. Parties compete, alliances change, leaders are challenged and governments can lose elections. Citizens are free to disagree, even with those who once led their struggle.
Political division is, therefore, not necessarily the enemy of peace. The important question is whether disagreement remains political — or becomes armed.
On Sept. 2, government security forces intercepted a convoy of about 200 MILF members traveling from Lanao del Sur into Lanao del Norte, many reportedly armed and in uniform. Instead of escalating into confrontation, government forces, the MILF and existing peace mechanisms coordinated until the group returned to its point of origin.
That incident offers a useful lesson. Peace does not mean that tensions disappear. It means that mechanisms exist to prevent tensions from becoming armed conflict.
But political pluralism and deliberate political fragmentation are not the same thing.
Uncomfortable question
There is an uncomfortable historical question here. Ferdinand Marcos Sr. governed Muslim Mindanao partly through powerful local allies, notably Mohammad Ali Dimaporo of Lanao, a formidable political strongman during martial law. The circumstances today are vastly different. The BARMM is the product of a negotiated peace agreement and a law guaranteeing autonomy, not authoritarian rule.
Yet President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s appointment of Macacua to replace Murad as interim chief minister, despite the expressed preference of the MILF leadership, raises a question: Is another Marcos administration discovering the political usefulness of cultivating an alternative center of power within a dominant Moro organization?
There is not enough evidence to answer affirmatively. Macacua’s appointment was within the president’s legal authority, and today’s circumstances bear little resemblance to his father’s authoritarian rule. But the MILF objected to Malacañang’s intervention and warned against attempts to “sow division and pit a brother against another.”
History deserves remembering, especially during Peace Month. The national government should avoid creating divisions in the Bangsamoro, or even the appearance that it prefers one faction or political party over another.
The peace process was built across several administrations. The late president Benigno Aquino III presided over the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro. His successor Rodrigo Duterte signed the Bangsamoro Organic Law and oversaw the establishment of the BARMM. President Marcos now has the opportunity to preside over another milestone: the first regular election of the Bangsamoro Parliament.
His contribution to peace should not be measured by which leader or party wins. It should be measured by whether the Bangsamoro people are genuinely allowed to choose.
Last week, following the ambush on Macacua’s convoy, I recalled Abraham Lincoln’s observation that “the ballot is stronger than the bullet.” Events since then suggest another question: Can the ballot ultimately become stronger than revolutionary command?
For generations, authority within revolutionary movements came from sacrifice, seniority, organizational discipline and command. On Sept. 14, another source of authority must become paramount: the consent of the governed.
This does not diminish the MILF’s historic contribution. Perhaps, the ultimate success of an armed movement that chose negotiation over continued war comes when the democratic institutions it helped create become strong enough to survive disagreement, even that within the movement itself.
This September also marks 30 years since the 1996 Final Peace Agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front. Now another Moro peace process approaches its own historic democratic test.
Peace is not completed when agreements are signed or guns fall silent. It becomes durable when political differences no longer require the guns to speak.
On Sept. 14, neither Malacañang, political clans and revolutionary commanders nor armed groups should decide who governs the Bangsamoro.
That decision belongs to the Bangsamoro voter.