WAS THE double-bomb attack that killed 20 people and wounded 111 during a mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo, Sulu on Sunday (Jan. 27) perpetrated by two suicide bombers, allegedly identified with the Islamic State (IS)?
Whether true of false, it overshadowed the “victory” of “yes” votes in the first plebiscite that ratified the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) as passed by Congress and approved by President Rodrigo Duterte. A second plebiscite is set on February 06 (for Cotabato and the six municipalities of Lanao del Norte, including areas who petitioned to join the Bangsamoro).
As widely propagandized by the Duterte administration and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the BOL (Republic Act No. 11054) is the same dog with different collar – the slightly-revised Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) that the previous Ninoy Aquino administration had tried but failed to pass in the Senate. It provides for an expanded autonomous political entity that would replace the discredited Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), allegedly with the end goal of “lasting peace” in Mindanao.
Why did the bombers target the Roman Catholic Church in the first place?
Sometime in March 2015 – two months after the Jan. 25, 2015 massacre of 44 members of the Philippine National Police’s Special Action Force (SAF) in Mamasapano, Maguindanao – this columnist warned:
“Most Christians in Mindanao, and probably elsewhere in the Philippines, are not in favor of the
proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL). They fear that the ultimate aim of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and other Muslim separatist movements is to steer the entire country into an Islamic theocracy akin to Saudi Arabia, which allows only Islam religion.
“There is historical basis for that belief. Our forebears had descended from Bornean, Indonesian and Malaysian immigrants. By the time Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan discovered the Philippines in behalf of the king of Spain in 1521, the Muslims had already asserted their supremacy in Mindanao.
“On the premise that the MILF would like to ride on the BBL to transform a portion of – if not the entire nation – into an Islamic state, then it would only rekindle animosity between Muslims and non-Muslims.”
Further on the Mamasapano tragedy, one recalls that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) filed before the Department of Justice a case for direct assault with murder against 26 individuals from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) but to no avail.
Nineteen years ago, the MILF forces were named “prime suspects” in the “Rizal Day bombing” in Makati on December 30, 2000, which killed 22 and injured 120.
Alas, the general public has not been fully appraised of the basic provisions of the half-ratified, pro-MILF law. The government has only vaguely said that the BOL would empower the Bangsamoro government to collect taxes within its expanded territory; establish its own police force; and establish its parliament that would pass laws in accordance with the Islamic Sharia Law.
Why did today’s senators okay the document that their predecessors had junked for its “unconstitutionality” on the ground that the Bangsamoro would usurp powers of the national government.
Just because President Duterte ordered them to do it?
Do they really think that an independent Bangsamoro would appease the terroristic Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that “sponsored” the Abu Sayyaf and the Maute Group in a war with government troops, ending in total devastation of Marawi City in 2017?
Comes now the “Islamic State of East Asia” (ISEA), which has claimed responsibility over Sunday’s Jolo atrocity.
When will we ever learn? (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
