By SAMMY JULIAN
Manila News Bureau Chief
MANILA — The proposed law aimed at ending decades of fighting in Mindanao has finally been submitted to President Benigno Aquino III.
Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. received a copy of the revised draft of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) at about 8 p.m. Wednesday, according to a report posted on the official Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) website.
“We are respectfully submitting the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) … and we are ready to adhere to our understanding to work on the final text of the proposed BBL after its review by the President,” Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) chair Mohagher Iqbal said in the cover letter of the document addressed to Secretary Ochoa.
After President Aquino reviews the revised draft, the Philippine government and the MILF will meet again to put in place the final text.
The government and the MILF signed a peace deal on March 27 after 17 years of negotiations, ending a decades-old armed conflict in Mindanao that has claimed at least 120,000 lives, while granting Muslim areas greater political autonomy.
The deal committed both parties to pass a law creating the Bangsamoro Region, which will supplant the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao once the law is passed and ratified.
The BTC submitted the law to the government in April for review prior to submission to Congress, only for the government to return it two months later with proposed revisions.
Malacañang earlier said the revised draft could be forwarded to Congress by the end of this month.
While the Palace would like the law to be passed by the end of the year, Senate President Franklin Drilon has been looking at the first quarter of 2015 as also a possible deadline for the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law, said Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda.
Given the current time constraints, Lacierda said, it is still possible to go through the timetable, particularly the holding of a plebiscite, the formation of the Bangsamoro Transitional Authority and the formation of a regional government to be synchronized with the national elections in 2016.
What the government and MILF would like to make sure is that, as soon as the proposed law is submitted to Congress, all concerns, including questions on constitutionality, will be minimized, he said.
“So that whatever concerns that they (Congress) have — both from a local perspective on those regions affected — all will be covered and also, on a national scale, will be minimized or mitigated,” Lacierda pointed out. “All these concerns will be minimized by the time the bill is submitted to Congress.”
President Aquino’s chief legal counsel Alfredo Benjamin Caguiao and Assistant Executive Secretary Mike Musngi were with Ochoa when he received the draft law./PN
