Left Flank

MLQ3 has another excellent post about «the perils of partition», following up yesterday's post about the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (BJE MOA on AD) (hereafter, MOA). I guess Manila should be relieved the South Ossetian crisis is monopolizing global press attention, because, with a fraction of the fireworks, the same issues are involved. Mindanao and the Caucasus both are home to distinct, squabbling ethnic groups, with long colorful historical memories of conquest and fleeting periods of authority. But, it's fascinating how the online debate (the product of a less urgent situation in RP) reveals how fractious the opposing parties and perspectives are, and how alliances of convenience between opponents is possible. There are also the lurking presences of the US and Big Oil. But, again because of the refreshing vitality of the online debate, the RP-MILF situation is not interpreted as a reversion to a Cold War realism, as is anything Russia does, but as its own messy contemporary creature.

MOA has touched some nationalist nerves, both conservative and separatist. Village Idiot Savant calls it a «big sellout»:

With all due respect to constitutionalist Fr. Joaquin Bernas, the proposed Memorandum of Agreement is not, as he avers, a «mere piece of paper.» It is a document that potentially provides the terms of reference for all future government dealings with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Those terms, with dubious historical and social foundations, are lopsidedly in favor of the MILF. While ceding territorial rights and commitments with almost careless abandon, the government makes no corresponding demands of the MILF.

As written, it provides casus belli for the MILF should the government fail to meet its demands. Why else would the MILF negotiating panel, with playground petulance, insist that the document is a «done deal» regardless of the temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court?

At the heart of it, the MOA is a territorial agreement. More than three quarters of the text pertains to boundary demarcations, resource rights, joint development, and profit sharing schemes. Its core can be summed up in the following introductory paragraph:

The Bangsamoro homeland and historic territory refer to the land mass as well as the maritime, terrestrial, fluvial and alluvial domains, and the aerial domain, the atmospheric space above it, embracing the Mindanao-Sulu-Palawan geographic region. However, delimitations are contained in the agreed Schedules (Categories).

Note the language: not «part of» but «embracing.» There are several ways in which a vague term like this can be interpreted, but in the broadest terms, it lays claim to the entirety of Mindanao.

On the other hand, rom has an «epiphany»:

The place was crawling with soldiers. Every fifteen minutes, a huge armored personnel carrier would come rumbling down Sinsuat Avenue, followed by trucks laden with soldiers in camouflage fatigues, all toting M-whatevers, looking all grim and distant. It was a faintly disturbing sight, every single time.

It was there that I experienced an epiphany. Watching the soldiers drive past, I suddenly realized that this latest secessionist spasm we’re undergoing is actually inevitable - the product of the fact that we are not a nation; a nation here defined as a form of self-defined cultural and social community.

Personally, I feel no strong kinship with the Muslims of the South, except in the most tenuous and strictly intellectual of terms. I am not a Muslim; I do not understand, much less accept many Islamic tenets - including the taboo against pork; and I have no ancestral roots in the South.

Come to that, neither do i feel kinship with the Ilocanos of the North, nor even the Visayans. About the only group I actually feel any cultural and social identity with is the Hiligaynon, and we’re mostly in Bacolod, Iloilo, and Guimaras. I’ve met Ilonggos from Cotabato, but even they feel sort of alien to me. And I don’t even feel Chinese.

And because we are not a nation (we’re a country, certainly, but that’s not the same thing), it is fairly difficult to sustain outrage at the possibility of the rise of the BJE. Intellectually, I rage against it for the sake of the concept of a sovereign country, but there is no personal affront. And when there is no outrage at the personal level, how long can you actually go ignoring the arguments in favor of the creation of a BJE.

I think readers know where my sympathies lie.