Sadness comes to mind for those who are frequently caught in the heated battles between rebels and government forces. While there are many in Mindanao who work towards peace and an understanding between great divides in ideological positions, there are as many who work towards the opposite goal. We may blame politicians, key leaders, and [...]
Yo, Jester!
September 12, 2008 By 38 Comments
The Terms of The Jester-in-Exile
September 12, 2008 By 5 Comments
(I write this post hoping that my brazenness will be forgiven by Nick, Dean, Benign0, Abe, Grace, Juned, Ding, Rom, and the rest of the Filipino Voices crew supportive of peace in the South.) (I write this post keeping in mind the members of my family who are based in Mindanao, and I write this [...]
Demystifying sovereignty in peace & AD talks
August 25, 2008 By 3 Comments
Blogger Dean Jorge Bocobo observes that “a lot of the verbiage on ancestral domain in the MOA-AD comes verbatim” from The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA). The MoA-AD is the Memorandum of Agreement between the Government of the Philippines (GRP) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on “ancestral domain” the constitutionality of which is currently [...]
CENPEG: MoA on Ancestral Domain: It’s Not Over, Yet
August 24, 2008 By 1 Comment
By the Policy Study, Publication, and Advocacy Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) August 5, 2008 The Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) on Ancestral Domain between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) does not automatically bind the Arroyo government to honor the territorial claim of the Bangsamoro people in Mindanao, Palawan, [...]
Talk, Jingoism and National Self-Defense
August 20, 2008 By 8 Comments
When I was in elementary my first encounter with a Muslim was the sweet and hellish sensation of the Durian fruit. They bought this to school every so often and the room was filled up with the smell of durian. We played and interacted with them there really was no difference. I could see none. [...]
Resolving the BJE Constitutionality: Acid Test for the Supreme Court
August 15, 2008 By 2 Comments
I am cross-posting this from At Midfield, given the weight of the issue: Six days ago, on August 9, the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s editorial was entitled ‘The Last Bulwark’ referring to how the Filipino people look to the Supreme Court as their last line of defense in the brazen assault on the very intewgrity of [...]
Federalism: a constitutional response to secession
August 13, 2008 By 16 Comments
(The piece below was first published in the moribund Pinoy-rin.net and Inq7.net on April 10, 2001. When I reposted it in PCIJ on July 29, 2005 as a reaction to Sheila Coronel’s “Dreaming of Federalism,” it elicited some purposeful exchanges among commenters; it was also picked up, and a shorter form of it was published [...]
The Bangsamoro Juridical Entity: Deal or No Deal?
August 13, 2008 By 6 Comments
The Supreme Court convenes en banc this Friday under heavy pressure to say whether the MoA-AD carving out a ‘separate sovereign’ in almost a fourth of the Philippines’ territory adheres to the Constitution. The oral arguments on August the 15 will, of course, not yet be D-Day as the high tribunal, with Chief Justice Reynato [...]
The realpolitik of Mindanao peace process
August 11, 2008 By 22 Comments
Dean Raul Panganiban is objecting to the proposed Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD) between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on the following grounds: 1) The 1987 Constitution uses “autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao” (ARMM) while MoA-AD uses the term “Bangsamoro Juridical Entity” [...]
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