CHICAGO – President-elect Obama accepted congratulations from nine presidents and prime ministers Thursday, returning calls from world leaders who reached out after his presidential victory.
The global financial crisis was among the topics Obama discussed with key U.S. allies he'll deal with during his administration.
Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said the president-elect spoke to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Sarkozy's office says they spoke for 30 minutes and characterized the discussion as "extremely warm" as the president congratulated Obama on a "brilliant" election victory. The statement said they discussed international issues, particularly the financial crisis, and agreed to meet in the "quite near future."
Harper's office said in a statement that they spoke about an international financial summit in Washington on Nov. 15 and its importance for addressing the global financial crisis. Obama had no plans to attend the meeting.
The prime minister's office says the two leaders emphasized that there could be no closer friends and allies than the United States and Canada and vowed to maintain and further build upon the relationship. Harper's office called it a warm exchange and said they agreed to talk again soon.
Calderon's office said Obama pledged continued U.S. support for Mexico's fight against organized crime and drug trafficking. A statement from the Mexican president's office says Obama told Calderon he was "conscious of the difficulty of the battle" and offered "decisive" U.S. support.
Congress approved $400 million in anti-drug aid for Mexico last June, but has yet to release the money.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday congratulated Obama on his election win in a letter, — the first time an Iranian leader has offered such wishes to a U.S. president-elect since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Iranian leader also said he hopes Obama will "use the opportunity to serve the (American) people and leave a good name for history" during his term in office.
In his conversation with Lee, Obama said the U.S.-South Korea alliance is a "cornerstone" of Asia's peace and stability, and promised improved relations between the countries, Seoul's presidential office said.
The United States helped defend South Korea during the Korean war and is its No. 1 ally. About 28,500 American troops are still stationed there to deter threats from communist North Korea.
Brown's Downing Street office says he and Obama spoke about several issues, including reform of the global financial system. Britain's Press Association newswire said the two had a "very friendly and positive" 10-minute conversation, covering topics including the world economy, the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Middle East peace process.
Australia's prime minister Kevin Rudd told reporters in Sydney that he spoke by telephone with Obama Friday to congratulate him on his historic win and discuss the various challenges the lie ahead for the world, chief among them the global financial crisis. The two also talked about the issues of national security and climate change during the 10- to 15-minute conversation, Rudd said.
"It was a good conversation, it was a friendly conversation," Rudd said. "The challenges we face are great....But I believe we have a strong partner in the U.S."
WHERE'S Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo here? She's probably the 1st to congratulate Obama!
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Greater Malaysia
Greater Malaysia
By Manuel L. Quezon III
On The Explainer last Tuesday (which you can watch online on YouTube) I presented a series of maps based, in turn, on maps you’ve already seen on previous entries, to argue along the lines of there being a basis for the territorial claims of the Moros. At the same time, looking at the past basis for today’s territorial claims also runs smack into the reality on the ground.
Starting with the present ARMM:
Then showing the areas proposed for inclusion by plebiscite next year:
And including areas proposed for inclusion by plebiscite in 25 years:
You get an idea of the (officially stated, and demarcated, anyway) claims of the MILF on behalf of all Moros.
And then comparing the total area with the historical extent of the Sultanate of Sulu, and the Blumentritt map, etc.:
The area seems to match almost exactly.
But the problem lies in that area overlapping territory that is now dominated by non-Moro ethnic groups:
Add to this, the following map (the B’Laans are not Muslim) which includes areas proposed for inclusion in the BJE after 25 years:
Now if this wasn’t a stark enough representation of the situation, one of the Young Moro League members in my show pointed out that their professors made reference to another map, which did not restrict Moro territory to the areas in the Blumentritt map, but pretty much covered most if not all of Mindanao; and furthermore, that the Blumentritt map overstated the territory of the Lumads. All I could answer was that I have yet to see the map they saw, but what I’d presented was information pretty much agreed upon by various contemporary maps.
But a recent entry in Bangsamoro Blog delves into the issue and essentially details the position raised by the Young Moro League member on my show:
The Bangsa Moro Homeland or territory must be composed of, at the MINIMUM, the areas specified in the Tripoli Agreement of 1976. Nothing less.
At most, it should be the land territory of the Sultanate of Maguindanao, Sultanate of Sulu, Rajaship of Buayan, the Maranao Confederacy and other Moro datuships as of 1898, the signing of the Treaty of Paris between America and Spain. This is because Spain had absolutely no right to cede what was not theirs. The Americans realized this and so they signed a separate treaty (the Bates Treaty) with the Sultan of Sulu.
Or, let the territory be according to the Moro Province created by the Americans which comprised all territory lying south of the 8th parallel latitude except Palawan and the eastern portion of the northwest peninsula of Mindanao. This includes the whole of Lanao, Davao, Cotabato, Zamboanga and Sulu before these provinces were dismembered later.
But Palawan was given to the Sultan of Sulu by the Sultan of Brunei at the same time as Sabah. If Palawan could not be part of the Bangsa Moro homeland, it should be given back to its first owners – Brunei — or be part of the Malaysian Federation like Sabah.
There was neither rhyme nor reason for the Americans to give the Moro province to the Philippines to form a Philippine Republic in 1946.
The Moro Province was NEVER a part of the Philippine Revolution of 1896 or 1898 or the Philippine Republic of Aguinaldo.
A cursory glance at history – real history not the fiction of Most Filipino historians – show that the Moros and Indios were never one people. Never until 1946. But the various Moro rebellions and the MNLF and MILF wars show that the Moros are not satisfied with being a second-class citizen in the Philippine Republic.
The ARMM territory is not recognized by most Moros as the totality of their Homeland.
Again, as I mentioned in my previous entry, what matters less is that there is a history that could contest the history that informs the argument above (the participation of Moro leaders in the drafting of the 1935 Constitution; in the 1st and 2nd National Assemblies, and election in the first nationally-elected Senate in 1941 and thereafter), and more that the history has been accepted as The Truth by those who espouse it (one member of my audience afterwards pointed me to the book, Nation Under Endless Tyranny, as the most widely-read and thus, influential, book they and other Moros read; it was written under a psuedonym by Mohagher Iqbal, the MILF peace panel chair); in which case, there is no room for debate. Stripped of its offensive rhetoric, and of its defensive enumerations respectively, what Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr’s speech advocates is the supremacy of secular law, while Rep. Mujiv S. Hataman argues from the perspective of Muslim religious law; the basic incompatibility of the two views was demonstrated on my show, too, where one member of the Moro League simply stated that if Sharia Law were made supreme in Moro areas, things would go a long way to calming down.
That being the case, let’s focus on the argument above making the case for the Moro homeland being defined either by the Tripoli Agreement of 1976 or by the old Moro Province established by the Americans.
The Moro Province is portrayed in a Wikipedia Map and here’s a detail for easy reference to the ethnic map above:
Now what has further complicated the situation is suspicion over the intentions of Malaysia and now, of other countries usually considered allies of the Philippine government. On my show, Dean Jorge Bocobo brought up an interesting point concerning the Russian invasion of Georgia, which has been producing some interesting news articles and analysis indeed. See Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks (a topic I’ve been interested in since I read a policy paper on the People Liberation Army’s cyberwar strategy in the late 1990s) and Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili’s ‘calculated gamble’: When he moved troops into disputed South Ossetia, the young leader adored by Washington put his nation in a precarious position. For a domestic reaction, see The Pelican Spectator. And this video:
Let’s start with Uncle Sam. The other night, the story went, Sen Arroyo: ‘Why was US at aborted MOA-AD signing?’ which makes me want to ask, with all due apologies to the other (fictional) Joker:
(image is the masterpiece of Billy Añonuevo, many thanks for permission to use it!)
But seriously, folks. Here is a very interesting map (from Strange Maps) showing how the Americans thought the world ought to be divided, in terms of spheres of influence, after World War II. The “New World Order” map, it’s called.
The American sphere of influence is in blue. The British, in orange. The Russian, in pink. Europe is a federation in purple, Scandinavia a federation in green. As it turns out the Russian portion pretty much conforms to the way things turned out. American ambitions and their reckoning of their interests are spelled out clearly (South America is a Federal Republic). What’s interesting is that the British Empire is reduced to a shadow of its former self, its Caribbean possessions transfered to American influence or control, India independent, scattered trading posts left in an Africa basically otherwise a Federated Republic, Southeast Asia seems to be a gift to Britain, with the former Dutch East Indies firmly placed under British control but Burma, Thailand, and Indochina given over to Chinese control and influence.
Notice, however, the Philippines. Let’s zoom in on our part of the world:
The Philippines, a protectorate under this American postwar vision includes extensive portions of present-day Indonesia (the Commonwealth government-in-exile had seriously proposed the union of the Philippines and Indonesia in 1943 and this caused great consternation with the Dutch, until the idea was quietly dropped; but it would resurrect two decades later with proposals for Maphilindo) while all of Borneo is apportioned to the British. Additional American protectorates are Taiwan (Formosa) and Hainan off the coast of China. The various islands comprising Guam, Nauru, etc. seem to be a gigantic federation that marks the American security perimeter in the Pacific.
this is all to point out the Americans like to think in terms of spheres of influence, and we like to think we sit comfortably -and importantly- in the American sphere. Thing is, from the time America decided on a Europe First policy in terms of prosecuting World War II, Asia has been the secondary front and Europe, the primary one. And whatever importance we had in American strategic thinking diminished to the point of barely existing, after the closing of the US Bases. I’ve mentioned in the past that even with the War on Terror, the United States has pretty much been content to leave Southeast Asia to its own devices, with Australia taking up the slack (strikingly reminiscent to the 1942 map assigning most of our part of the world to the British Commonwealth). A couple of years back, in a think tank conference on the region in Washington, the darling of American policymakers was the President of Indonesia and the Philippines mattered mainly in terms of the threat to regional security posed by the JI.
If you look at a map of the Pentagon’s strategy for the War on Terror:
You will see that the Philippines does fall within the sort of global picket fence American strategists have erected to contain threats to their security. You will see, however, that what they foresee as a future hot spot lies within the territory of Indonesia and does not include the Philippines -we enter the picture only in so far as we contribute to managing that potential flashpoint, or hastening its eruption.
If you measure the significance of a country in terms of aid and where that aid’s concentrated, then American aid is significant by Philippine standards but modest and even negligible by American standards; if you peg it, as most figures suggest, at about $60.5 million, it’s peanuts; even if you factor in that the amount (the overwhelming majority of which is targeted at Mindanao) is worth double or even treble that, in terms of benefits to the local economy and savings to the Philippine government and military (there are other costs and funding devoted, for example, to military operations and exercises), they are still far from sizeable in comparison to neighboring countries or elsewhere America’s invested in the world.
If there’s a concern in our part of the world, it’s less JI and more the People’s Republic of China. I wrote about this in my June 2007 entry, New Asian Alliance and there’s additional stuff in my Inquirer Current entry, The China Card.
While the Quadrilateral Initiative, which I’ve written about, focuses on China, it has also laid down the basis for a latter-day SEATO in our region, composed of the USA, Australia, Japan and India. Except for India, it’s the three (US, Japan, Australia) who were most noticeable in the aborted signing ceremony in Malaysia. They have all established ties with the MILF in particular and Muslim Mindanao in general. They have, to put it simply, gotten their foot in the door, and this means whatever happens, they have established a basis for having a say in the eventual outcome of the RP-MILF negotiations. This cannot please Malaysia.
For more on this, including its pressing strategic concerns, see Eagle Speak and this map, which shows naval flash points the alliance has been wargaming (note the flow of oil past Palawan and Mindanao):
But blogger the nutbox, in an extremely interesting entry, puts forward some intriguing information and ties in what I’ve put foward, above, with what’s going on in Mindanao:
What many don’t know is that no less than US Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte discreetly came to Manila right after the Supreme Court temporarily halted the signing of the controversial GRP-MILF agreement last week. Prior to that, rumor has it (I can’t really confirm this) that US Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney went to Bangkok to meet with President George W. Bush, who was then en route to China for the opening of the Olympics, to brief him on the Bangsamoro issue. Ambassador Kenney, by the way, had been meeting with MILF leaders before this whole imbroglio broke out.
These only prove the fact that the United States’s involement and stake on the Bangsamoro issue is deper than we all thought. And as always, the Americans would do all it takes- even thread dangerous waters if need be- just to pursue their national interest.
I believe the United States is coddling- if not outright aiding- the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in exchange for major pro-US concessions.
As early as 2003, the United States Institute of Peace, which is funded by the US Congress, has been involved in the “peace process” in Mindanao. Among their activities is the creation of a so-called “peace constituency,” which entails disseminating “information” about “ancestral domain” and the history and culture of the so-called “Moro” people to government leaders, policy makers, university students and even soldiers.
This campaign, as far as I’m concerned, only aims to aid the idea that the “Moros” constitute a people distinct from the Filipinos. Not only is this idea faulty, it is also very dangerous because it gives the MILF the moral ascendancy to take up arms and it further sows division between Christian and Muslim Filipinos (I’ll talk about these in another post).
Also, despite the clear existence of a discreet alliance between the MILF and the extremist terrorist groups in Mindanao, Washington has consistently moved against designating the MILF as a terrorist organization.
More importantly, the US has been very supportive of the creation of the BJE. In fact, Ambassador Kenney even witheld her announcement of an aid package for Mindanao worth 25 million dollars when the Supreme Court TRO stopped the signing of the GRP-MILF agreement, as if the signing was a pre-condition for the package.
Now, in geopolitics, everything is quid pro quo. The quid from the US to the MILF is this apparent support of the creation of the BJE. What, then, is the quo from the MILF?
Under the GRP-MILF agreement, the BJE is to have complete control over the natural resources of the region, along with the authority to enter into any form of economic cooperation ventures with foreign countries, as long as they don’t not constitute direct agression against the Republic of the Philippines.
In other words, the BJE can let the United States explore the energy reserves in the Sulu Sea and the Liguasan Marsh. And exploration, in turn, could give the US the opening to maneuver for exploitation of those resources. We all know that in this era of economic competition among global powers, energy- whether fossil-based or from alternative sources- is very vital. Not to mention the fact that Minsupala is actually a key route for oil exports from the Middle East to Northeast Asia and the United States.
Secondly, MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu has stated that the seperatist group is open to the possibiity of the United States establishing a military base within the territory of this proposed BJE. Now this is a price the US would move mountains to get.
First of all, the United States has troop concentrations in South Korea and Japan, but not in the ASEAN region. A military base in the proposed BJE, therefore, would complete Washington’s efforts to encircle and contain the Chinese, who have been actively doing alarming maneuvers in the South China Sea lately.
Secondly, such a military base would give the Americans the springboard they need to intensify their campaign against the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which is believed to be based in Indonesia. You see, the Americans need such a springboard badly, and they can never expect to get one in the teritorries of Malaysia and Indonesia. In the status quo, the Manila politicians, the mainstream media and the Constitution make it hard for the Americans to establish such a springboard in Mindanao. This is why the best way for the US to get this springboard is through this BJE.
The benefits the United States will get from supporting the creation of a BJE, therefore, are economic and geopolitical in nature.
Note, however, that as of this writing, none of my colleagues in the media have been able to confirm if, indeed, Negroponte’s been here lately or if the US Ambassador did give a briefing to Bush in Bangkok. I am also skeptical about the United States going all-out to support the creation of a Bangsamoro State, because doing so complicates matters in a part of the world the US would prefer to keep quiet as it has major things to attend to in Afghanistan and Iraq. but what it cannot afford to do, is to appear inconsequential in anything that happens; and if the Philippine government concludes a deal with the MILF, then for reasons of prestige and more pragmatic considerations, the US has to seem to matter -to all sides. See New Philippine Revolution:
This is the reason why US Ambassador Kristie Kenney was there all throughout the peace talks, to make doubly sure that the GRP and the MILF really come to terms with each other. Defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro in his interview over at Private Conversations on ANC says that the real interest of the US in those talks is to ensure regional security. Why?
If the Mindanao conflict spills over the rest of the region, it threatens the US mainland. A radicalization of young Moro fighters in Mindanao poses a very serious risk in the security of America. Remember that past World Trade bombers trained and even used the Mindanao corridor as a springboard towards the US. The possibility of Mindanao becoming a regional hub of terrorism is very high if these peace initiatives fail.
But I do think that American energies aren’t just aimed at keeping a lid on things in Mindanao; I believe their priorities includes containing another Muslim nation in our part of the world.
I’ve been thinking about the question of who will gain the most from the creation of the BJE and I think there’s only one answer: Malaysia. (My own views on Malaysia as far as Mindanao’s concerned can be found in Search for an Honest Broker in Mindanao). therefore even if the United States has larger incentives for supporting Federalism in the Philippines, its playing footsie with the MILF also gives it leverage when it comes to the country that used to be the sole patron of the MILF: and that’s Malaysia.
If you look at this map:
The Muslim World is in green. If you look at our part of the world, the two contenders for dominance of the Muslims are Indonesia and Malaysia. The Philippines has traditionally allied itself with Indonesia versus Malaysia, but in recent years the Philippine government has fallen under the influence of Malaysia.
Malaysia itself considers Sabah it’s Achilles heel, and since the 1960s has supported secessionist groups among the Moros to keep the Philippine government busy while it embarks on the late 20th and early 21st century version of the Philippines’ own colonization of Mindanao. Except this time, its the Malaysian government pursuing its own version in Sabah. After its influence waned with the MNLF, which gravited to Indonesia and which concluded a peace deal with Marcos and his successors, the Malaysians have taken to funding and giving political support to the MILF. At the very least, this keeps Manila perpetually off kilter; it might actually pay off in terms of a nominally Philippine-affiliated but in reality, pliably pro-Malaysian client state in a future Bangsamoro; it could, at best, result in outright annexation as part of a Greater Malaysian Federation stretching from the border of Thailand, to the borders with Singapore and Indonesia, to the vicinity of Davao -or beyond. This would make for a large, extremely wealthy, country that would keep that other perennial Malaysian rival, Indonesia, off kilter, too.
You can trace these things on a regional map:
A Malaysian-friendly Bangsamoro client state (which even now, its future leaders politely point out will decline to bring up any embarrassing questions concerning Sabah, regardless of how the old sultanate’s borders and territories are used to justify expanding the ARMM in Mindanao itself; and which one Moro blogger, as quoted above, could very well be allowed to incorporate Palawan into it) would also be well-poised to project its claims into the Spratleys area:
You can easily imagine the Philippine flags being replaced with Malaysian flags, expanding the scope of the Malaysian claim, based on its expansion of its sphere of influence to the Bangsamoro portion of Palawan, for example.
Consider, finally, from a global perspective, blurry brain’s views in the draft of an article he posted in his blog:
Another thing that must be emphasized, particularly when read in the context of news that flags of independence have been waived by the MILF, is that there IS NO JUSTIFICATION UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW FOR THE CREATION OF A SEPARATE LEGAL ENTITY. What is really disturbing here is the impression circulated by some parties that the right to “self-determination” could serve as the basis for creating (or eventually creating) such a separate entity and that by doing so we are being a “good international citizen” complying with “modern interpretations” of international law. This is complete crap. If a separate Moro republic is created, it is simply because we allowed it and recognized it for some inexplicable reason. There is simply no international law that requires or compels the Philippines to agree to a separate entity carved from its national territory…
In any event, as I wrote previously, the right to self-determination applies only with regard to colonial peoples. It is essentially a right against colonialism and foreign military occupation. IT DOES NOT GIVE LICENSE TO SECESSSION. It is well worth reiterating, again and again if need be, that the right to self-determination does not allow a minority group to secede and become an independent State.
This right to self-determination could be found in the United Nations Charter, the two 1966 Covenants of Human Rights, several General Assembly Resolutions, such as GAR 2625, as well as GAR 1514 of 1960 (or The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Territories and Peoples). It must be emphasized that the latter Resolution pointedly states: “Any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” Indeed, insofar as cultural, religious or ethnic minorities are concerned, no general rights under the ambit of self-determination are actually applicable to them. International law justly recognizes (even if our government doesn’t) that the demands of political stability and territorial integrity of States are simply too important.
The maintenance, therefore, of the Philippine’s territorial integrity takes priority over any right, whether it be collective or individual, including those claimed under self-determination. As succinctly put by former UN Secretary General U Thant: “The United Nations has never accepted and does not accept and I do not believe it will ever accept the principle of secession of a part of a Member State.”
Which brings us back to the MILF. From the very start, I pointed out that the signing of the agreement with the government was the real and ultimate prize for that group. To a certain extent, the intervention of the Supreme Court thwarted that objective. The question is what the MILF will do next.
Bong Montesa (incidentally, an interesting look at him as a political partisan is in Phoenix Eyrie, Reloaded) presents this flowchart:
Has he selectively gamed the possibilities? On the surface, no. After all, the outcomes depend on what both the government and the MILF do, in response to certain developments.
Manuel Buencamino, in his column the other day, Just a piece of paper?, looks at what the MILF itself has said, and he says there is no ambiguity in what the MILF intends to do:
It’s obvious that the MOA is more than just a piece of paper that provides a “psychological boost” for the secessionist group. There is no turning back once the Arroyo administration signs the pact.
If the current government or any of its successors do not implement the accord “in the guise of following the Constitution,” the MILF will raise hell.
Ameen told Luwaran, “This is plain lokohan [foolishness] and the MILF cannot allow this to happen.”
The MILF will make war if it does not get the MOA it wants. This is obvious from the veiled threat published August 6, 2008, in the MILF’s Luwaran:
“The MILF has told the government of the Republic of the Philippines that its options to solve the Moro problem are reduced to only two: choose Vice Governor Emmanuel Piñol and his company, who are pushing for war, or to continue the path of peace with the MILF.”
The MILF can count on the support of Malaysia in case hostilities break out over the MOA. Malaysian mediator Othman Andul Razak, talking to the Associated Press on May 2, 2008, said, “If the government wants the talks to progress, it can do it. It can think creatively. But if it wants to stick to the constitution, things will not move.”
Othman characterized the Philippine position on Constitution processes as “harping on technical points.”
Malaysia cannot be blamed for acting in its national interest. The Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) controlled by the MILF will serve as a buffer state between the rest of the Philippines and Sabah.
The MILF has denied it promised Sabah to the Malaysians in exchange for support, but the May 7, 2008, statement of Mohagher Iqbal, MILF chief negotiator, sounds equivocal.
“Never for a single moment did we talk about [the Sabah claim]. With Malaysia as facilitator, it is only practical for us not to bring that up or include Sabah in our proposed homeland. We are silent on the issue. We never said it belongs to the Bangsamoro people, just as we never said it does not belong to us. It is a nonissue for us at this point,” he said.
The MILF and the Malaysians are acting in their best interests; is the Arroyo administration acting in the best interest of the nation?
The growing consensus, much to the fury and alarm of people emotionally invested in the RP-MILF agreement like Montesa (or Rudy Rodil: both surely sincere people but one wonders if they aren’t so close to the problem that they have lost all sense of perspective on the loyalty the rest of the country expects them to demonstrate to the Republic), is that the administration was neither negotiating in good faith, or with a clear comprehension of the implications of the deal, domestically and internationally. Read Yen Makabenta’s A peace that could lead to war. See, also, Miko Samson’s rebuttal of the view proposed by the government negotiators, that the Constitution is a trifling detail that shouldn’t get in the way of the historic agreement they (the negotiators) achieved. See also Moroland’s Weblog for recriminations within the Moro community.
As I told the young Moros on my show last Tuesday, my fear is we will be much further away from peace, because of an agreement that its negotiators claim brings us so close to achieving that peace. Mon Casiple in his blog, shows why the proponents of the agreement (whether foreign supporters like Mennonite peace builders) may be alienating a larger peace constituency:
In the present situation of a lameduck presidency with huge popularity deficit, any campaign for the public approval of the MOA-AD will meet stiff resistance.
What I am saying is this: Federalism may need to be revisited if it is touted as the framework solution to the Bangsamoro demand for their right to self-determination and to the question of just and lasting peace in Mindanao. It may bring more problems than it solves.
The only political path the peace process can take under the present situation is for government to undertake widespread and intensive national discussions, not to sell the MOA-AD but to discern the national consensus (particularly the limits of national concessions), go back to the negotiating table, and redraft a document based on this consensus. For the MILF, the same process should likewise be done among the Bangsamoro people, including the MNLF and other political groups within the community and bring their own consensus to the negotiating table. For the peace advocates, the main thing is for them to take a step back, to undertake the same national discussion with all stakeholders, and to disclaim their own biases in order to achieve a just and lasting peace based on a national consensus of all major stakeholders.
An entirely different topic -in that the proposals deserve serious consideration and debate- is the switch to Federalism. Ging Gagelonia, blogging At Midfield tackles one reason why the debate’s become poisoned by suspicions concerning the President’s motives. She took advantage of a resolution engineered in the Senate by Aquilino Pimentel, Jr.:
Pimentel says he has specified in the very title of the Senate resolution the limited scope of the Cha-cha train itinerary so that it will not have ’side trips’ that will tinker with other contentious changes in the 1987 fundamental law.
Pimentel also bellows that the Senate and House of Representatives will vote separate and not as a single chamber when they convenes as a constituent assemly.
But those are parameters as far as Pimentel is concerned. He himself is the first to admit that in this early stage of GMA’s Cha-cha push, the administration-controlled House could still throw in various alternate resolutions to complicate the debates before the two houses of Congress are able to pass an acceptable constituent assembly measure before theCha-cha train leaves the station.
As for the proposals put forward by Pimentel, blogger Snow World (hat tip to Jester for pointing it out) zeroes in on the proposals and The Jester in Exile makes short shrift of them in two entries: Lazy Legislature and Ivory Towers of Power. I have my own reasons for agreeing with The Warrior Lawyer calling the President’s move “the Federalism of Convenience.” It isn’t something that has excited her except when politically expedient.
When I proposed to the President that she hold her 2004 inauguration in Cebu, it was on the basis of her making a symbolic, but meaningful, commitment to Federalism by doing so. It was endorsed by administration officials on that basis. But as it emerged, the President decided to be sworn into office in Cebu, not because of Federalism, but as a “thank you” for the province and city delivering their votes to her. You can see one reason I believe she suffers from a failure of imagination and the kind of approach she has to politics. you could see it again in 2006, when genuine and committed exponents of Federalism like Jose Abueva found themselves used -and abused- by an administration that found them a useful smokescreen for what it really wanted: lifting term limits and shifting to the parliamentary system.
And there you have it: she has a region rattled, governments scrambling to keep up, a situation unraveling, and for what? An expanded menu of political options under the smokescreen of a concept she neither fully comprehends or has ever genuinely subscribed to.
By Manuel L. Quezon III
On The Explainer last Tuesday (which you can watch online on YouTube) I presented a series of maps based, in turn, on maps you’ve already seen on previous entries, to argue along the lines of there being a basis for the territorial claims of the Moros. At the same time, looking at the past basis for today’s territorial claims also runs smack into the reality on the ground.
Starting with the present ARMM:
Then showing the areas proposed for inclusion by plebiscite next year:
And including areas proposed for inclusion by plebiscite in 25 years:
You get an idea of the (officially stated, and demarcated, anyway) claims of the MILF on behalf of all Moros.
And then comparing the total area with the historical extent of the Sultanate of Sulu, and the Blumentritt map, etc.:
The area seems to match almost exactly.
But the problem lies in that area overlapping territory that is now dominated by non-Moro ethnic groups:
Add to this, the following map (the B’Laans are not Muslim) which includes areas proposed for inclusion in the BJE after 25 years:
Now if this wasn’t a stark enough representation of the situation, one of the Young Moro League members in my show pointed out that their professors made reference to another map, which did not restrict Moro territory to the areas in the Blumentritt map, but pretty much covered most if not all of Mindanao; and furthermore, that the Blumentritt map overstated the territory of the Lumads. All I could answer was that I have yet to see the map they saw, but what I’d presented was information pretty much agreed upon by various contemporary maps.
But a recent entry in Bangsamoro Blog delves into the issue and essentially details the position raised by the Young Moro League member on my show:
The Bangsa Moro Homeland or territory must be composed of, at the MINIMUM, the areas specified in the Tripoli Agreement of 1976. Nothing less.
At most, it should be the land territory of the Sultanate of Maguindanao, Sultanate of Sulu, Rajaship of Buayan, the Maranao Confederacy and other Moro datuships as of 1898, the signing of the Treaty of Paris between America and Spain. This is because Spain had absolutely no right to cede what was not theirs. The Americans realized this and so they signed a separate treaty (the Bates Treaty) with the Sultan of Sulu.
Or, let the territory be according to the Moro Province created by the Americans which comprised all territory lying south of the 8th parallel latitude except Palawan and the eastern portion of the northwest peninsula of Mindanao. This includes the whole of Lanao, Davao, Cotabato, Zamboanga and Sulu before these provinces were dismembered later.
But Palawan was given to the Sultan of Sulu by the Sultan of Brunei at the same time as Sabah. If Palawan could not be part of the Bangsa Moro homeland, it should be given back to its first owners – Brunei — or be part of the Malaysian Federation like Sabah.
There was neither rhyme nor reason for the Americans to give the Moro province to the Philippines to form a Philippine Republic in 1946.
The Moro Province was NEVER a part of the Philippine Revolution of 1896 or 1898 or the Philippine Republic of Aguinaldo.
A cursory glance at history – real history not the fiction of Most Filipino historians – show that the Moros and Indios were never one people. Never until 1946. But the various Moro rebellions and the MNLF and MILF wars show that the Moros are not satisfied with being a second-class citizen in the Philippine Republic.
The ARMM territory is not recognized by most Moros as the totality of their Homeland.
Again, as I mentioned in my previous entry, what matters less is that there is a history that could contest the history that informs the argument above (the participation of Moro leaders in the drafting of the 1935 Constitution; in the 1st and 2nd National Assemblies, and election in the first nationally-elected Senate in 1941 and thereafter), and more that the history has been accepted as The Truth by those who espouse it (one member of my audience afterwards pointed me to the book, Nation Under Endless Tyranny, as the most widely-read and thus, influential, book they and other Moros read; it was written under a psuedonym by Mohagher Iqbal, the MILF peace panel chair); in which case, there is no room for debate. Stripped of its offensive rhetoric, and of its defensive enumerations respectively, what Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr’s speech advocates is the supremacy of secular law, while Rep. Mujiv S. Hataman argues from the perspective of Muslim religious law; the basic incompatibility of the two views was demonstrated on my show, too, where one member of the Moro League simply stated that if Sharia Law were made supreme in Moro areas, things would go a long way to calming down.
That being the case, let’s focus on the argument above making the case for the Moro homeland being defined either by the Tripoli Agreement of 1976 or by the old Moro Province established by the Americans.
The Moro Province is portrayed in a Wikipedia Map and here’s a detail for easy reference to the ethnic map above:
Now what has further complicated the situation is suspicion over the intentions of Malaysia and now, of other countries usually considered allies of the Philippine government. On my show, Dean Jorge Bocobo brought up an interesting point concerning the Russian invasion of Georgia, which has been producing some interesting news articles and analysis indeed. See Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks (a topic I’ve been interested in since I read a policy paper on the People Liberation Army’s cyberwar strategy in the late 1990s) and Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili’s ‘calculated gamble’: When he moved troops into disputed South Ossetia, the young leader adored by Washington put his nation in a precarious position. For a domestic reaction, see The Pelican Spectator. And this video:
Let’s start with Uncle Sam. The other night, the story went, Sen Arroyo: ‘Why was US at aborted MOA-AD signing?’ which makes me want to ask, with all due apologies to the other (fictional) Joker:
(image is the masterpiece of Billy Añonuevo, many thanks for permission to use it!)
But seriously, folks. Here is a very interesting map (from Strange Maps) showing how the Americans thought the world ought to be divided, in terms of spheres of influence, after World War II. The “New World Order” map, it’s called.
The American sphere of influence is in blue. The British, in orange. The Russian, in pink. Europe is a federation in purple, Scandinavia a federation in green. As it turns out the Russian portion pretty much conforms to the way things turned out. American ambitions and their reckoning of their interests are spelled out clearly (South America is a Federal Republic). What’s interesting is that the British Empire is reduced to a shadow of its former self, its Caribbean possessions transfered to American influence or control, India independent, scattered trading posts left in an Africa basically otherwise a Federated Republic, Southeast Asia seems to be a gift to Britain, with the former Dutch East Indies firmly placed under British control but Burma, Thailand, and Indochina given over to Chinese control and influence.
Notice, however, the Philippines. Let’s zoom in on our part of the world:
The Philippines, a protectorate under this American postwar vision includes extensive portions of present-day Indonesia (the Commonwealth government-in-exile had seriously proposed the union of the Philippines and Indonesia in 1943 and this caused great consternation with the Dutch, until the idea was quietly dropped; but it would resurrect two decades later with proposals for Maphilindo) while all of Borneo is apportioned to the British. Additional American protectorates are Taiwan (Formosa) and Hainan off the coast of China. The various islands comprising Guam, Nauru, etc. seem to be a gigantic federation that marks the American security perimeter in the Pacific.
this is all to point out the Americans like to think in terms of spheres of influence, and we like to think we sit comfortably -and importantly- in the American sphere. Thing is, from the time America decided on a Europe First policy in terms of prosecuting World War II, Asia has been the secondary front and Europe, the primary one. And whatever importance we had in American strategic thinking diminished to the point of barely existing, after the closing of the US Bases. I’ve mentioned in the past that even with the War on Terror, the United States has pretty much been content to leave Southeast Asia to its own devices, with Australia taking up the slack (strikingly reminiscent to the 1942 map assigning most of our part of the world to the British Commonwealth). A couple of years back, in a think tank conference on the region in Washington, the darling of American policymakers was the President of Indonesia and the Philippines mattered mainly in terms of the threat to regional security posed by the JI.
If you look at a map of the Pentagon’s strategy for the War on Terror:
You will see that the Philippines does fall within the sort of global picket fence American strategists have erected to contain threats to their security. You will see, however, that what they foresee as a future hot spot lies within the territory of Indonesia and does not include the Philippines -we enter the picture only in so far as we contribute to managing that potential flashpoint, or hastening its eruption.
If you measure the significance of a country in terms of aid and where that aid’s concentrated, then American aid is significant by Philippine standards but modest and even negligible by American standards; if you peg it, as most figures suggest, at about $60.5 million, it’s peanuts; even if you factor in that the amount (the overwhelming majority of which is targeted at Mindanao) is worth double or even treble that, in terms of benefits to the local economy and savings to the Philippine government and military (there are other costs and funding devoted, for example, to military operations and exercises), they are still far from sizeable in comparison to neighboring countries or elsewhere America’s invested in the world.
If there’s a concern in our part of the world, it’s less JI and more the People’s Republic of China. I wrote about this in my June 2007 entry, New Asian Alliance and there’s additional stuff in my Inquirer Current entry, The China Card.
While the Quadrilateral Initiative, which I’ve written about, focuses on China, it has also laid down the basis for a latter-day SEATO in our region, composed of the USA, Australia, Japan and India. Except for India, it’s the three (US, Japan, Australia) who were most noticeable in the aborted signing ceremony in Malaysia. They have all established ties with the MILF in particular and Muslim Mindanao in general. They have, to put it simply, gotten their foot in the door, and this means whatever happens, they have established a basis for having a say in the eventual outcome of the RP-MILF negotiations. This cannot please Malaysia.
For more on this, including its pressing strategic concerns, see Eagle Speak and this map, which shows naval flash points the alliance has been wargaming (note the flow of oil past Palawan and Mindanao):
But blogger the nutbox, in an extremely interesting entry, puts forward some intriguing information and ties in what I’ve put foward, above, with what’s going on in Mindanao:
What many don’t know is that no less than US Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte discreetly came to Manila right after the Supreme Court temporarily halted the signing of the controversial GRP-MILF agreement last week. Prior to that, rumor has it (I can’t really confirm this) that US Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney went to Bangkok to meet with President George W. Bush, who was then en route to China for the opening of the Olympics, to brief him on the Bangsamoro issue. Ambassador Kenney, by the way, had been meeting with MILF leaders before this whole imbroglio broke out.
These only prove the fact that the United States’s involement and stake on the Bangsamoro issue is deper than we all thought. And as always, the Americans would do all it takes- even thread dangerous waters if need be- just to pursue their national interest.
I believe the United States is coddling- if not outright aiding- the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in exchange for major pro-US concessions.
As early as 2003, the United States Institute of Peace, which is funded by the US Congress, has been involved in the “peace process” in Mindanao. Among their activities is the creation of a so-called “peace constituency,” which entails disseminating “information” about “ancestral domain” and the history and culture of the so-called “Moro” people to government leaders, policy makers, university students and even soldiers.
This campaign, as far as I’m concerned, only aims to aid the idea that the “Moros” constitute a people distinct from the Filipinos. Not only is this idea faulty, it is also very dangerous because it gives the MILF the moral ascendancy to take up arms and it further sows division between Christian and Muslim Filipinos (I’ll talk about these in another post).
Also, despite the clear existence of a discreet alliance between the MILF and the extremist terrorist groups in Mindanao, Washington has consistently moved against designating the MILF as a terrorist organization.
More importantly, the US has been very supportive of the creation of the BJE. In fact, Ambassador Kenney even witheld her announcement of an aid package for Mindanao worth 25 million dollars when the Supreme Court TRO stopped the signing of the GRP-MILF agreement, as if the signing was a pre-condition for the package.
Now, in geopolitics, everything is quid pro quo. The quid from the US to the MILF is this apparent support of the creation of the BJE. What, then, is the quo from the MILF?
Under the GRP-MILF agreement, the BJE is to have complete control over the natural resources of the region, along with the authority to enter into any form of economic cooperation ventures with foreign countries, as long as they don’t not constitute direct agression against the Republic of the Philippines.
In other words, the BJE can let the United States explore the energy reserves in the Sulu Sea and the Liguasan Marsh. And exploration, in turn, could give the US the opening to maneuver for exploitation of those resources. We all know that in this era of economic competition among global powers, energy- whether fossil-based or from alternative sources- is very vital. Not to mention the fact that Minsupala is actually a key route for oil exports from the Middle East to Northeast Asia and the United States.
Secondly, MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu has stated that the seperatist group is open to the possibiity of the United States establishing a military base within the territory of this proposed BJE. Now this is a price the US would move mountains to get.
First of all, the United States has troop concentrations in South Korea and Japan, but not in the ASEAN region. A military base in the proposed BJE, therefore, would complete Washington’s efforts to encircle and contain the Chinese, who have been actively doing alarming maneuvers in the South China Sea lately.
Secondly, such a military base would give the Americans the springboard they need to intensify their campaign against the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which is believed to be based in Indonesia. You see, the Americans need such a springboard badly, and they can never expect to get one in the teritorries of Malaysia and Indonesia. In the status quo, the Manila politicians, the mainstream media and the Constitution make it hard for the Americans to establish such a springboard in Mindanao. This is why the best way for the US to get this springboard is through this BJE.
The benefits the United States will get from supporting the creation of a BJE, therefore, are economic and geopolitical in nature.
Note, however, that as of this writing, none of my colleagues in the media have been able to confirm if, indeed, Negroponte’s been here lately or if the US Ambassador did give a briefing to Bush in Bangkok. I am also skeptical about the United States going all-out to support the creation of a Bangsamoro State, because doing so complicates matters in a part of the world the US would prefer to keep quiet as it has major things to attend to in Afghanistan and Iraq. but what it cannot afford to do, is to appear inconsequential in anything that happens; and if the Philippine government concludes a deal with the MILF, then for reasons of prestige and more pragmatic considerations, the US has to seem to matter -to all sides. See New Philippine Revolution:
This is the reason why US Ambassador Kristie Kenney was there all throughout the peace talks, to make doubly sure that the GRP and the MILF really come to terms with each other. Defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro in his interview over at Private Conversations on ANC says that the real interest of the US in those talks is to ensure regional security. Why?
If the Mindanao conflict spills over the rest of the region, it threatens the US mainland. A radicalization of young Moro fighters in Mindanao poses a very serious risk in the security of America. Remember that past World Trade bombers trained and even used the Mindanao corridor as a springboard towards the US. The possibility of Mindanao becoming a regional hub of terrorism is very high if these peace initiatives fail.
But I do think that American energies aren’t just aimed at keeping a lid on things in Mindanao; I believe their priorities includes containing another Muslim nation in our part of the world.
I’ve been thinking about the question of who will gain the most from the creation of the BJE and I think there’s only one answer: Malaysia. (My own views on Malaysia as far as Mindanao’s concerned can be found in Search for an Honest Broker in Mindanao). therefore even if the United States has larger incentives for supporting Federalism in the Philippines, its playing footsie with the MILF also gives it leverage when it comes to the country that used to be the sole patron of the MILF: and that’s Malaysia.
If you look at this map:
The Muslim World is in green. If you look at our part of the world, the two contenders for dominance of the Muslims are Indonesia and Malaysia. The Philippines has traditionally allied itself with Indonesia versus Malaysia, but in recent years the Philippine government has fallen under the influence of Malaysia.
Malaysia itself considers Sabah it’s Achilles heel, and since the 1960s has supported secessionist groups among the Moros to keep the Philippine government busy while it embarks on the late 20th and early 21st century version of the Philippines’ own colonization of Mindanao. Except this time, its the Malaysian government pursuing its own version in Sabah. After its influence waned with the MNLF, which gravited to Indonesia and which concluded a peace deal with Marcos and his successors, the Malaysians have taken to funding and giving political support to the MILF. At the very least, this keeps Manila perpetually off kilter; it might actually pay off in terms of a nominally Philippine-affiliated but in reality, pliably pro-Malaysian client state in a future Bangsamoro; it could, at best, result in outright annexation as part of a Greater Malaysian Federation stretching from the border of Thailand, to the borders with Singapore and Indonesia, to the vicinity of Davao -or beyond. This would make for a large, extremely wealthy, country that would keep that other perennial Malaysian rival, Indonesia, off kilter, too.
You can trace these things on a regional map:
A Malaysian-friendly Bangsamoro client state (which even now, its future leaders politely point out will decline to bring up any embarrassing questions concerning Sabah, regardless of how the old sultanate’s borders and territories are used to justify expanding the ARMM in Mindanao itself; and which one Moro blogger, as quoted above, could very well be allowed to incorporate Palawan into it) would also be well-poised to project its claims into the Spratleys area:
You can easily imagine the Philippine flags being replaced with Malaysian flags, expanding the scope of the Malaysian claim, based on its expansion of its sphere of influence to the Bangsamoro portion of Palawan, for example.
Consider, finally, from a global perspective, blurry brain’s views in the draft of an article he posted in his blog:
Another thing that must be emphasized, particularly when read in the context of news that flags of independence have been waived by the MILF, is that there IS NO JUSTIFICATION UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW FOR THE CREATION OF A SEPARATE LEGAL ENTITY. What is really disturbing here is the impression circulated by some parties that the right to “self-determination” could serve as the basis for creating (or eventually creating) such a separate entity and that by doing so we are being a “good international citizen” complying with “modern interpretations” of international law. This is complete crap. If a separate Moro republic is created, it is simply because we allowed it and recognized it for some inexplicable reason. There is simply no international law that requires or compels the Philippines to agree to a separate entity carved from its national territory…
In any event, as I wrote previously, the right to self-determination applies only with regard to colonial peoples. It is essentially a right against colonialism and foreign military occupation. IT DOES NOT GIVE LICENSE TO SECESSSION. It is well worth reiterating, again and again if need be, that the right to self-determination does not allow a minority group to secede and become an independent State.
This right to self-determination could be found in the United Nations Charter, the two 1966 Covenants of Human Rights, several General Assembly Resolutions, such as GAR 2625, as well as GAR 1514 of 1960 (or The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Territories and Peoples). It must be emphasized that the latter Resolution pointedly states: “Any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” Indeed, insofar as cultural, religious or ethnic minorities are concerned, no general rights under the ambit of self-determination are actually applicable to them. International law justly recognizes (even if our government doesn’t) that the demands of political stability and territorial integrity of States are simply too important.
The maintenance, therefore, of the Philippine’s territorial integrity takes priority over any right, whether it be collective or individual, including those claimed under self-determination. As succinctly put by former UN Secretary General U Thant: “The United Nations has never accepted and does not accept and I do not believe it will ever accept the principle of secession of a part of a Member State.”
Which brings us back to the MILF. From the very start, I pointed out that the signing of the agreement with the government was the real and ultimate prize for that group. To a certain extent, the intervention of the Supreme Court thwarted that objective. The question is what the MILF will do next.
Bong Montesa (incidentally, an interesting look at him as a political partisan is in Phoenix Eyrie, Reloaded) presents this flowchart:
Has he selectively gamed the possibilities? On the surface, no. After all, the outcomes depend on what both the government and the MILF do, in response to certain developments.
Manuel Buencamino, in his column the other day, Just a piece of paper?, looks at what the MILF itself has said, and he says there is no ambiguity in what the MILF intends to do:
It’s obvious that the MOA is more than just a piece of paper that provides a “psychological boost” for the secessionist group. There is no turning back once the Arroyo administration signs the pact.
If the current government or any of its successors do not implement the accord “in the guise of following the Constitution,” the MILF will raise hell.
Ameen told Luwaran, “This is plain lokohan [foolishness] and the MILF cannot allow this to happen.”
The MILF will make war if it does not get the MOA it wants. This is obvious from the veiled threat published August 6, 2008, in the MILF’s Luwaran:
“The MILF has told the government of the Republic of the Philippines that its options to solve the Moro problem are reduced to only two: choose Vice Governor Emmanuel Piñol and his company, who are pushing for war, or to continue the path of peace with the MILF.”
The MILF can count on the support of Malaysia in case hostilities break out over the MOA. Malaysian mediator Othman Andul Razak, talking to the Associated Press on May 2, 2008, said, “If the government wants the talks to progress, it can do it. It can think creatively. But if it wants to stick to the constitution, things will not move.”
Othman characterized the Philippine position on Constitution processes as “harping on technical points.”
Malaysia cannot be blamed for acting in its national interest. The Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) controlled by the MILF will serve as a buffer state between the rest of the Philippines and Sabah.
The MILF has denied it promised Sabah to the Malaysians in exchange for support, but the May 7, 2008, statement of Mohagher Iqbal, MILF chief negotiator, sounds equivocal.
“Never for a single moment did we talk about [the Sabah claim]. With Malaysia as facilitator, it is only practical for us not to bring that up or include Sabah in our proposed homeland. We are silent on the issue. We never said it belongs to the Bangsamoro people, just as we never said it does not belong to us. It is a nonissue for us at this point,” he said.
The MILF and the Malaysians are acting in their best interests; is the Arroyo administration acting in the best interest of the nation?
The growing consensus, much to the fury and alarm of people emotionally invested in the RP-MILF agreement like Montesa (or Rudy Rodil: both surely sincere people but one wonders if they aren’t so close to the problem that they have lost all sense of perspective on the loyalty the rest of the country expects them to demonstrate to the Republic), is that the administration was neither negotiating in good faith, or with a clear comprehension of the implications of the deal, domestically and internationally. Read Yen Makabenta’s A peace that could lead to war. See, also, Miko Samson’s rebuttal of the view proposed by the government negotiators, that the Constitution is a trifling detail that shouldn’t get in the way of the historic agreement they (the negotiators) achieved. See also Moroland’s Weblog for recriminations within the Moro community.
As I told the young Moros on my show last Tuesday, my fear is we will be much further away from peace, because of an agreement that its negotiators claim brings us so close to achieving that peace. Mon Casiple in his blog, shows why the proponents of the agreement (whether foreign supporters like Mennonite peace builders) may be alienating a larger peace constituency:
In the present situation of a lameduck presidency with huge popularity deficit, any campaign for the public approval of the MOA-AD will meet stiff resistance.
What I am saying is this: Federalism may need to be revisited if it is touted as the framework solution to the Bangsamoro demand for their right to self-determination and to the question of just and lasting peace in Mindanao. It may bring more problems than it solves.
The only political path the peace process can take under the present situation is for government to undertake widespread and intensive national discussions, not to sell the MOA-AD but to discern the national consensus (particularly the limits of national concessions), go back to the negotiating table, and redraft a document based on this consensus. For the MILF, the same process should likewise be done among the Bangsamoro people, including the MNLF and other political groups within the community and bring their own consensus to the negotiating table. For the peace advocates, the main thing is for them to take a step back, to undertake the same national discussion with all stakeholders, and to disclaim their own biases in order to achieve a just and lasting peace based on a national consensus of all major stakeholders.
An entirely different topic -in that the proposals deserve serious consideration and debate- is the switch to Federalism. Ging Gagelonia, blogging At Midfield tackles one reason why the debate’s become poisoned by suspicions concerning the President’s motives. She took advantage of a resolution engineered in the Senate by Aquilino Pimentel, Jr.:
Pimentel says he has specified in the very title of the Senate resolution the limited scope of the Cha-cha train itinerary so that it will not have ’side trips’ that will tinker with other contentious changes in the 1987 fundamental law.
Pimentel also bellows that the Senate and House of Representatives will vote separate and not as a single chamber when they convenes as a constituent assemly.
But those are parameters as far as Pimentel is concerned. He himself is the first to admit that in this early stage of GMA’s Cha-cha push, the administration-controlled House could still throw in various alternate resolutions to complicate the debates before the two houses of Congress are able to pass an acceptable constituent assembly measure before theCha-cha train leaves the station.
As for the proposals put forward by Pimentel, blogger Snow World (hat tip to Jester for pointing it out) zeroes in on the proposals and The Jester in Exile makes short shrift of them in two entries: Lazy Legislature and Ivory Towers of Power. I have my own reasons for agreeing with The Warrior Lawyer calling the President’s move “the Federalism of Convenience.” It isn’t something that has excited her except when politically expedient.
When I proposed to the President that she hold her 2004 inauguration in Cebu, it was on the basis of her making a symbolic, but meaningful, commitment to Federalism by doing so. It was endorsed by administration officials on that basis. But as it emerged, the President decided to be sworn into office in Cebu, not because of Federalism, but as a “thank you” for the province and city delivering their votes to her. You can see one reason I believe she suffers from a failure of imagination and the kind of approach she has to politics. you could see it again in 2006, when genuine and committed exponents of Federalism like Jose Abueva found themselves used -and abused- by an administration that found them a useful smokescreen for what it really wanted: lifting term limits and shifting to the parliamentary system.
And there you have it: she has a region rattled, governments scrambling to keep up, a situation unraveling, and for what? An expanded menu of political options under the smokescreen of a concept she neither fully comprehends or has ever genuinely subscribed to.
Monday, August 25, 2008
American and Malaysian Role/Interest in Mindanao
Anwar Ibrahim said something startling at a big public rally on Thursday evening. He said he has been told that Maxis would jam its mobile lines in Permatang Pauh on Monday and Tuesday.
He said he did not know yet what was the purpose of the plan, but was intrigued when he was told about it.
On Friday evening, the precocious son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddin said something startling: He said since Anwar got funds for his campaign from foreign sources, they would dictate his policies. Anwar, if he becomes PM, would build a naval base for the Americans in Sabah, with the excuse being to allow them to monitor JI-Abu Sayyaf in southern Philippines.
And KJ said something surprising: He said the first thing Anwar will ink is the Free Trade Agreement with the US, to the detriment of farmers and Bumiputera companies.
Surprising because, errr KJ, it is the CURRENT Malaysian government that has been for years been discussing on the FTA with the Americanos. If you don't like it at all, tell your pop-in-law lah. No need to cheat the US with endless discussions as if Malaysian wants to sign it.
Both Anwar and KJ quoted reliable sources.
Both claims are part of the hyperbole known as the Mother of All By-Elections. Or are they the truth?
If Anwar wins, it will be the first by-election lost by Barisan Nasional in eight years, the last one being in Lunas, Kedah, when PKR's Saifuddin Nasution won a much-heated state-assembly battle (not Parliament).
The P.Pauh defeat could well disintegrate BN.
If Anwar loses, that will be his political end.
And it will spell the end of Pakatan Rakyat.
If Anwar wins, he could become prime minister by next month, if he delivers his promise.
If Anwar loses, Najib Tun Razak would become PM in two years' time, if not by the end of the year.
Either way, if peaceful (though sometimes 'dirty') means are used to achieve political targets, Malaysia wins.
And the genial FRU Abang Polis stationed in Pearl View Hotel can relax a bit.
He said he did not know yet what was the purpose of the plan, but was intrigued when he was told about it.
On Friday evening, the precocious son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddin said something startling: He said since Anwar got funds for his campaign from foreign sources, they would dictate his policies. Anwar, if he becomes PM, would build a naval base for the Americans in Sabah, with the excuse being to allow them to monitor JI-Abu Sayyaf in southern Philippines.
And KJ said something surprising: He said the first thing Anwar will ink is the Free Trade Agreement with the US, to the detriment of farmers and Bumiputera companies.
Surprising because, errr KJ, it is the CURRENT Malaysian government that has been for years been discussing on the FTA with the Americanos. If you don't like it at all, tell your pop-in-law lah. No need to cheat the US with endless discussions as if Malaysian wants to sign it.
Both Anwar and KJ quoted reliable sources.
Both claims are part of the hyperbole known as the Mother of All By-Elections. Or are they the truth?
If Anwar wins, it will be the first by-election lost by Barisan Nasional in eight years, the last one being in Lunas, Kedah, when PKR's Saifuddin Nasution won a much-heated state-assembly battle (not Parliament).
The P.Pauh defeat could well disintegrate BN.
If Anwar loses, that will be his political end.
And it will spell the end of Pakatan Rakyat.
If Anwar wins, he could become prime minister by next month, if he delivers his promise.
If Anwar loses, Najib Tun Razak would become PM in two years' time, if not by the end of the year.
Either way, if peaceful (though sometimes 'dirty') means are used to achieve political targets, Malaysia wins.
And the genial FRU Abang Polis stationed in Pearl View Hotel can relax a bit.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Federal Republic of the Philippines: Pimentel’s Blueprint
Originally posted at
http://dinggagelonia.blogspot.com/2008/08/federal-republic-of-philippines.html
Take a closer look into Senate Resolution # 10, Senator Aquilino Pimentel’s Blueprint for the Federal Republic of the Philippines (FRP).
Resisting any premature comment, here first are the main points:
* The FRP will have a 425-Member unicameral Federal Congress with the legislature headquartered in Bohol
* The declared National Territory encompasses the areas to which the Philippine has pending and unresolved historical claims, meaning the Spratlys and Sabah.
* GMA is mandated to step down in 2010 and is prohibited from seeking election in the new government.
Read on:
* The 63-page annex of SR 10 contains 154 proposed revisions of the Constitution.
* Only two articles, the Bill of Rights and Citizenship, are untouched.
* Federal House of Representatives will have 75 senators and not more than 350 congressmen, or a total of 425 members.
* Rationale:
1. “Whereas, the highly centralized system of government has brought about a spotty development of the nation where preferential treatment has been given to localities whose officials are friendly with or have easy access to an incumbent administration;
2. Whereas, this lopsided arrangement has spawned a host of problems including massive nationwide poverty to runaway insurgencies and rebellions that feed on the societal inequalities in the nation;
3. Whereas, creating eleven States out of the Republic would establish 11 centers of finance and development in the archipelago as follows:
* The 11 Federal States:
1. The State of Northern Luzon;
2. The State of Central Luzon;
3. The State of Southern Tagalog;
4. The State of Bicol;
5. The State of Minparom;
6. The State of Eastern Visayas;
7. The State of Central Visayas;
8. The State of Western Visayas;
9. The State of Northern Mindanao;
10. The State of Southern Mindanao; and
11. The State of BangsaMoro”
* GMA’s Term Limit:
“Unless the incumbent President is removed from office, dies, or resigns, the Incumbent shall serve until 2010, the year her constitutional term of office ends. She is, however, not qualified to run again for office under the Constitution.”
SR10 does not have any proposal to switch from the presidential to the parliamentary form of government.
* Longer term limits:
SR10 extends the term limits for members of the House of Representatives, by setting four years, instead of the present three years, as the length of one term, and allowing a maximum of three consecutive terms.
Under SR10, provincial, city, and municipal officials, and also the governor and vice governor of the proposed new states, would all get up to three terms of four years each, longer than at present. Senators would stay within their present limit of two terms of six years each.
* The State of Bangsamoro:
SR10’s proposed State of Bangsamoro only includes the provinces of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Shariff Kabunsuan, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, with capital at Marawi City. The areas that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is bargaining for overlap with portions of SR10’s proposed States of Northern Mindanao and Southern Mindanao.
* SR10’s proposed State of Northern Mindanao (capital at Cagayan de Oro City):
Covers the provinces of Zamboanga del Norte, Misamis Occidental, Camiguin, Misamis Oriental, Bukidnon, Agusan del Norte, Dinagat Island, Surigao del Norte, Lanao del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboangay Sibugay, and all cities, municipalities and villages therein.
* SR10’s proposed State of Southern Mindanao (capital at Davao City) :
Covers the provinces of Agusan del Sur, Surigao del Sur, Compostela Valley, Davao, Davao Oriental, Davao del Sur, South Cotabato, Sarangani, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, and all local entities therein.
SR10 seeks to transfer major portions of national government operations to the Visayas and Mindanao. It would keep Manila as the seat of the Executive Branch, but proposes to transfer the Legislative Branch to Tagbilaran City. It would require the Supreme Court to transfer to Cagayan de Oro City within 10 years.
* The Seat of the unicameral Federal Congress:
The Federal Congress shall hold office and its sessions in the City of Tagbilaran in the State of Central Visayas. Congress may authorize its committees to hold public hearings in aid of legislation or conduct investigations in furtherance of its oversight functions in any part of the Republic.
How the Constituent Assembly will vote:
“NOW, THEREFORE, Be it resolved as it is hereby resolved by the Senate with the House of Representatives concurring, upon a vote of three-fourths of all the Members of both Houses voting separately, to convene Congress into a constituent assembly pursuant to Section 1, paragraph 1 of Article XVll of the Constitution, and revise the Constitution for the purpose of adopting a federal system of government that will create 11 States, constitute Metro-Manila as the Federal Administrative Region, and convert the nation into the Federal Republic of the Philippines.”
Key Revisions Proposed in SR 10:
Revision No. 1.
Section 1. Article 1. National Territory.
The scope of the national territory is hereby revised by adding a new paragraph as follows: The national territory shall likewise include all islands occupied or claimed by the Republic out of historic title, by discovery or other means recognized under international law and its exclusive economic zone as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Revenues and Taxes
(2) All revenues and taxes collected by the local government units or by national government agencies in accordance with the Local Government Code of 1991, Republic Act No. 7160, shall be divided in the following manner: twenty percent (20%) shall accrue to the Federal Government and eighty percent
(80%) to the States. (3) Of the share accruing to the States, thirty percent (30%) shall pertain to the
State concerned and seventy percent (70%) shall be apportioned among the provinces, cities, municipalities and barangay according to the formula stated in the Local Government Code of 1991.
Revision No. 2.
New Section. Article XIV. Utilization of Local Resources.
States may pursue local development in the utilization of mineral, marine and aquatic, forest and other natural resources. They may engage in local and international trade and commerce to attain self sufficiency and progress within their respective territories subject to the limitations imposed by the Constitution.
Revision No. 3.
New Section. Article XIV. Small-Scale Utilization and Development of Natural Resources.
The right of citizens to engage in the small-scale utilization and development of natural resources, as well as cooperative fish farming, with priority to the right of the subsistence fishermen and fish workers in rivers, lakes, bays, and lagoons as provided in the Local Government Code of 1991 shall not be abridged.
(Note: Senators Rodolfo Biazon and Panfilo Lacson have withdrawn their signatures from the resolution.)
http://dinggagelonia.blogspot.com/2008/08/federal-republic-of-philippines.html
Take a closer look into Senate Resolution # 10, Senator Aquilino Pimentel’s Blueprint for the Federal Republic of the Philippines (FRP).
Resisting any premature comment, here first are the main points:
* The FRP will have a 425-Member unicameral Federal Congress with the legislature headquartered in Bohol
* The declared National Territory encompasses the areas to which the Philippine has pending and unresolved historical claims, meaning the Spratlys and Sabah.
* GMA is mandated to step down in 2010 and is prohibited from seeking election in the new government.
Read on:
* The 63-page annex of SR 10 contains 154 proposed revisions of the Constitution.
* Only two articles, the Bill of Rights and Citizenship, are untouched.
* Federal House of Representatives will have 75 senators and not more than 350 congressmen, or a total of 425 members.
* Rationale:
1. “Whereas, the highly centralized system of government has brought about a spotty development of the nation where preferential treatment has been given to localities whose officials are friendly with or have easy access to an incumbent administration;
2. Whereas, this lopsided arrangement has spawned a host of problems including massive nationwide poverty to runaway insurgencies and rebellions that feed on the societal inequalities in the nation;
3. Whereas, creating eleven States out of the Republic would establish 11 centers of finance and development in the archipelago as follows:
* The 11 Federal States:
1. The State of Northern Luzon;
2. The State of Central Luzon;
3. The State of Southern Tagalog;
4. The State of Bicol;
5. The State of Minparom;
6. The State of Eastern Visayas;
7. The State of Central Visayas;
8. The State of Western Visayas;
9. The State of Northern Mindanao;
10. The State of Southern Mindanao; and
11. The State of BangsaMoro”
* GMA’s Term Limit:
“Unless the incumbent President is removed from office, dies, or resigns, the Incumbent shall serve until 2010, the year her constitutional term of office ends. She is, however, not qualified to run again for office under the Constitution.”
SR10 does not have any proposal to switch from the presidential to the parliamentary form of government.
* Longer term limits:
SR10 extends the term limits for members of the House of Representatives, by setting four years, instead of the present three years, as the length of one term, and allowing a maximum of three consecutive terms.
Under SR10, provincial, city, and municipal officials, and also the governor and vice governor of the proposed new states, would all get up to three terms of four years each, longer than at present. Senators would stay within their present limit of two terms of six years each.
* The State of Bangsamoro:
SR10’s proposed State of Bangsamoro only includes the provinces of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Shariff Kabunsuan, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, with capital at Marawi City. The areas that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is bargaining for overlap with portions of SR10’s proposed States of Northern Mindanao and Southern Mindanao.
* SR10’s proposed State of Northern Mindanao (capital at Cagayan de Oro City):
Covers the provinces of Zamboanga del Norte, Misamis Occidental, Camiguin, Misamis Oriental, Bukidnon, Agusan del Norte, Dinagat Island, Surigao del Norte, Lanao del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboangay Sibugay, and all cities, municipalities and villages therein.
* SR10’s proposed State of Southern Mindanao (capital at Davao City) :
Covers the provinces of Agusan del Sur, Surigao del Sur, Compostela Valley, Davao, Davao Oriental, Davao del Sur, South Cotabato, Sarangani, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, and all local entities therein.
SR10 seeks to transfer major portions of national government operations to the Visayas and Mindanao. It would keep Manila as the seat of the Executive Branch, but proposes to transfer the Legislative Branch to Tagbilaran City. It would require the Supreme Court to transfer to Cagayan de Oro City within 10 years.
* The Seat of the unicameral Federal Congress:
The Federal Congress shall hold office and its sessions in the City of Tagbilaran in the State of Central Visayas. Congress may authorize its committees to hold public hearings in aid of legislation or conduct investigations in furtherance of its oversight functions in any part of the Republic.
How the Constituent Assembly will vote:
“NOW, THEREFORE, Be it resolved as it is hereby resolved by the Senate with the House of Representatives concurring, upon a vote of three-fourths of all the Members of both Houses voting separately, to convene Congress into a constituent assembly pursuant to Section 1, paragraph 1 of Article XVll of the Constitution, and revise the Constitution for the purpose of adopting a federal system of government that will create 11 States, constitute Metro-Manila as the Federal Administrative Region, and convert the nation into the Federal Republic of the Philippines.”
Key Revisions Proposed in SR 10:
Revision No. 1.
Section 1. Article 1. National Territory.
The scope of the national territory is hereby revised by adding a new paragraph as follows: The national territory shall likewise include all islands occupied or claimed by the Republic out of historic title, by discovery or other means recognized under international law and its exclusive economic zone as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Revenues and Taxes
(2) All revenues and taxes collected by the local government units or by national government agencies in accordance with the Local Government Code of 1991, Republic Act No. 7160, shall be divided in the following manner: twenty percent (20%) shall accrue to the Federal Government and eighty percent
(80%) to the States. (3) Of the share accruing to the States, thirty percent (30%) shall pertain to the
State concerned and seventy percent (70%) shall be apportioned among the provinces, cities, municipalities and barangay according to the formula stated in the Local Government Code of 1991.
Revision No. 2.
New Section. Article XIV. Utilization of Local Resources.
States may pursue local development in the utilization of mineral, marine and aquatic, forest and other natural resources. They may engage in local and international trade and commerce to attain self sufficiency and progress within their respective territories subject to the limitations imposed by the Constitution.
Revision No. 3.
New Section. Article XIV. Small-Scale Utilization and Development of Natural Resources.
The right of citizens to engage in the small-scale utilization and development of natural resources, as well as cooperative fish farming, with priority to the right of the subsistence fishermen and fish workers in rivers, lakes, bays, and lagoons as provided in the Local Government Code of 1991 shall not be abridged.
(Note: Senators Rodolfo Biazon and Panfilo Lacson have withdrawn their signatures from the resolution.)
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Filipinos in Sabah: Diplomatic Bargaining Chips
Written on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 8:26 am | by Ding G. Gagelonia
The real reason for the intensified expulsion of undocumented Filipinos (TNT’s or Tago-Ng-Tago) in the disputed territory of Sabah, which has been under formal Malaysia control since 1963, has finally been admitted in a tangential way by Malacanang.
A report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer quotes presidential alter ego or ‘little president’ Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita as saying, “you can’t disregard the Sabah issue, but we can’t connect all these issues at once. Otherwise the goodwill that we have with the other country will be lost.”
Mr. Ermita made the remark in the context of the latest round of talks between Manila and Kuala Lumpur (actually the 5th RP-Malaysia Working Group on Migrant Workers held against the backdrop of the expulsion of the latest batch of Filipinos from Sabah.
Ermita was careful to say that the dialogue was held “under an atmosphere of common understanding of the need to solve an immediate problem.”
So here, the Philippine official has let the cat out of the bag: the current concern is the manner the Filipino TNTs are being expelled, most after being jailed for months on end.
By that remark, Ermita reveals that Manila is maintaining its policy of putting the Sabah claim of the Philippines in the back-burner, while Malaysia is using the deportations to nudge the Philippines to take action.
This is all too apparent given the conflict reports last week about the heirs of Sultan Jamalul Kiram The First allegedly relinquishing their claim to the territory and denials from other members of the sultanate.
What cannot be denied is that Malaysia has through the year continue to pay the sultanate ‘rent’ on the ‘perpetual lease’ which, as far as the claimants are concerned, has long expired.
So what has really emerged is that the Filipino illegals in Sabah variously estimated at a low of 200,000 to a high of 400,000 or 500,00 are the diplomatic bargaining chips in the long drawn out territorial dispute.
As for the expelled Filipinos, many of them originally from Sulu, they simply will ‘cool their heels’ and venture back to Sabah because “there are no jobs in our home towns, our families no longer want us and while we are discriminated against and even jailed in Sabah we will risk going back because here you cannot eat shame.”
Indeed this human drama will continue with the Philippine government not really willing, much less able, to face the issue squarely.
Both the Philippine Senate and House of Representatives have frozen action of the new Baselines Law. Apparently, low on their list of priorities is the reintegration of our compatriots in Sabah.
If this is not deplorable, and tragic, nothing else is:Filipinos abandoned by their own government and society.
The real reason for the intensified expulsion of undocumented Filipinos (TNT’s or Tago-Ng-Tago) in the disputed territory of Sabah, which has been under formal Malaysia control since 1963, has finally been admitted in a tangential way by Malacanang.
A report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer quotes presidential alter ego or ‘little president’ Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita as saying, “you can’t disregard the Sabah issue, but we can’t connect all these issues at once. Otherwise the goodwill that we have with the other country will be lost.”
Mr. Ermita made the remark in the context of the latest round of talks between Manila and Kuala Lumpur (actually the 5th RP-Malaysia Working Group on Migrant Workers held against the backdrop of the expulsion of the latest batch of Filipinos from Sabah.
Ermita was careful to say that the dialogue was held “under an atmosphere of common understanding of the need to solve an immediate problem.”
So here, the Philippine official has let the cat out of the bag: the current concern is the manner the Filipino TNTs are being expelled, most after being jailed for months on end.
By that remark, Ermita reveals that Manila is maintaining its policy of putting the Sabah claim of the Philippines in the back-burner, while Malaysia is using the deportations to nudge the Philippines to take action.
This is all too apparent given the conflict reports last week about the heirs of Sultan Jamalul Kiram The First allegedly relinquishing their claim to the territory and denials from other members of the sultanate.
What cannot be denied is that Malaysia has through the year continue to pay the sultanate ‘rent’ on the ‘perpetual lease’ which, as far as the claimants are concerned, has long expired.
So what has really emerged is that the Filipino illegals in Sabah variously estimated at a low of 200,000 to a high of 400,000 or 500,00 are the diplomatic bargaining chips in the long drawn out territorial dispute.
As for the expelled Filipinos, many of them originally from Sulu, they simply will ‘cool their heels’ and venture back to Sabah because “there are no jobs in our home towns, our families no longer want us and while we are discriminated against and even jailed in Sabah we will risk going back because here you cannot eat shame.”
Indeed this human drama will continue with the Philippine government not really willing, much less able, to face the issue squarely.
Both the Philippine Senate and House of Representatives have frozen action of the new Baselines Law. Apparently, low on their list of priorities is the reintegration of our compatriots in Sabah.
If this is not deplorable, and tragic, nothing else is:Filipinos abandoned by their own government and society.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Sulu claimants deny reports they have given up on Sabah
By Julie Alipala, Ed General
Mindanao Bureau
First Posted 20:11:00 07/17/2008
JOLO, Sulu, Philippines—(UPDATE) Sabah claimants Sultan Ismael Kiram II and Rajah Muda Agbimuddin Kiram have denied reports from Kota Kinabalu that the heirs of the Sulu sultanate were dropping their claims on North Borneo.
"What is being reported that nine principal heirs (dropped the Sabah claim) is not true. I hope the Inquirer will help us straighten facts," their spokesman, Abraham Idjirani, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer Thursday. The two are presently in Malaysia.
In a report on Malaysian newspaper The Star, Datu Omar Ali Datu Backtiyal said Wednesday he had obtained the signatures of the nine heirs of the late Sultan Mohamat Jamal Al Alam agreeing to relinquish their claim on the Malaysian state.
At the same time, Putra Eddy Sulaiman, “executive secretary and Keeper of the Royal Seal” of Rodinood Julaspi Kiram II, who claims to be the closest heir to the Sulu sultanate, said Kiram was also dropping the claim on Sabah.
Agbimuddin Kiram is the official administrator of Sabah, appointed by his father Sultan Punjungan Kiram, who in turn was appointed administrator of North Borneo by the Sessions Court of North Borneo under Justice Macaskie in 1939.
The issue on dropping Sabah claim would require lengthy discussions involving not just the Sulu Sultanate but the United Nations, as well, according to Idjirani.
"There are many important issues to be discussed before dropping the Sabah claim and one important issue is the condition and situations surrounding the descendants' welfare. It is an established fact that the Sabah issue is waiting for the pending resolution at the United Nations," Idjirani added.
The two descendants of the Sultan of Sulu are in Malaysia, but not for the Sabah claim. They have been discussing issues with Datu Omar Ali Dati Backtiyal pertaining to the immediate review of the 1963 Manila Accord that was signed by Malaysia Prime Minister Tongko Abdurahman, Sukarno of Indonesia and President Diosdado Macapagal of the Philippines.
The 1963 Manila Accord, according to Idjirani, pertains to the inclusion of Sabah into the Federation of Malaysia that would not prejudice the entry of refugees and interests of the parties concerned.
"Sultan Ismael Kiram II is very much concerned about the plight of the refugees and we are here in Malaysia to visit and see for ourselves the situations and conditions of the refugees," the spokesperson said, referring to the Filipinos who would soon be deported by Sabah.
He added that Kiram’s talks with Backtiyal revolved around a joint undertaking that would resolve the refugees' problems in Sabah, with emphasis on humanitarian concerns.
Meanwhile, a lawyer representing the heirs and administrators of the former Sultanate of Sulu branded on Thursday as lies reports that they had dropped the Sabah claim.
Lawyer Ulka Ulama told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by phone that "nobody has the power to drop the claim up to now."
"We do not have a sultan anymore, who has territory and government. The last sultanate existed up to 1936 only," he said.
Ulama said the claim of Datu Omar Ali Datu Backtiyal about securing the signatures of the nine heirs to the sultanate was not true either.
"It will never happen. I have been a lawyer for the heirs of the sultanate and those recognized administrators of the sultanate for 40 years now," he said.
Ulama said it would be impossible for Backtiyal to secure the signatures of the heirs because they already died.
"Those must be fake heirs. Only the administrators are living now," he said.
Among the recognized administrators is Datu Esmail Kiram of the Mora Napsa heir, according to Ulama.
Reacting to the same report, which said that another claimant to the sultanate, Rodinood Julaspi Kiram II, also dropped his claim to Sabah, Ulama said he was one of those considered "fake."
"He said he descended from Sultan Jamalul Kiram II who has no known heir so he is not real also," Ulama said.
Ulama vowed to come out with an official statement in the next few days to dispute the Backtiyal claim and that of Rodinood.
Mindanao Bureau
First Posted 20:11:00 07/17/2008
JOLO, Sulu, Philippines—(UPDATE) Sabah claimants Sultan Ismael Kiram II and Rajah Muda Agbimuddin Kiram have denied reports from Kota Kinabalu that the heirs of the Sulu sultanate were dropping their claims on North Borneo.
"What is being reported that nine principal heirs (dropped the Sabah claim) is not true. I hope the Inquirer will help us straighten facts," their spokesman, Abraham Idjirani, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer Thursday. The two are presently in Malaysia.
In a report on Malaysian newspaper The Star, Datu Omar Ali Datu Backtiyal said Wednesday he had obtained the signatures of the nine heirs of the late Sultan Mohamat Jamal Al Alam agreeing to relinquish their claim on the Malaysian state.
At the same time, Putra Eddy Sulaiman, “executive secretary and Keeper of the Royal Seal” of Rodinood Julaspi Kiram II, who claims to be the closest heir to the Sulu sultanate, said Kiram was also dropping the claim on Sabah.
Agbimuddin Kiram is the official administrator of Sabah, appointed by his father Sultan Punjungan Kiram, who in turn was appointed administrator of North Borneo by the Sessions Court of North Borneo under Justice Macaskie in 1939.
The issue on dropping Sabah claim would require lengthy discussions involving not just the Sulu Sultanate but the United Nations, as well, according to Idjirani.
"There are many important issues to be discussed before dropping the Sabah claim and one important issue is the condition and situations surrounding the descendants' welfare. It is an established fact that the Sabah issue is waiting for the pending resolution at the United Nations," Idjirani added.
The two descendants of the Sultan of Sulu are in Malaysia, but not for the Sabah claim. They have been discussing issues with Datu Omar Ali Dati Backtiyal pertaining to the immediate review of the 1963 Manila Accord that was signed by Malaysia Prime Minister Tongko Abdurahman, Sukarno of Indonesia and President Diosdado Macapagal of the Philippines.
The 1963 Manila Accord, according to Idjirani, pertains to the inclusion of Sabah into the Federation of Malaysia that would not prejudice the entry of refugees and interests of the parties concerned.
"Sultan Ismael Kiram II is very much concerned about the plight of the refugees and we are here in Malaysia to visit and see for ourselves the situations and conditions of the refugees," the spokesperson said, referring to the Filipinos who would soon be deported by Sabah.
He added that Kiram’s talks with Backtiyal revolved around a joint undertaking that would resolve the refugees' problems in Sabah, with emphasis on humanitarian concerns.
Meanwhile, a lawyer representing the heirs and administrators of the former Sultanate of Sulu branded on Thursday as lies reports that they had dropped the Sabah claim.
Lawyer Ulka Ulama told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by phone that "nobody has the power to drop the claim up to now."
"We do not have a sultan anymore, who has territory and government. The last sultanate existed up to 1936 only," he said.
Ulama said the claim of Datu Omar Ali Datu Backtiyal about securing the signatures of the nine heirs to the sultanate was not true either.
"It will never happen. I have been a lawyer for the heirs of the sultanate and those recognized administrators of the sultanate for 40 years now," he said.
Ulama said it would be impossible for Backtiyal to secure the signatures of the heirs because they already died.
"Those must be fake heirs. Only the administrators are living now," he said.
Among the recognized administrators is Datu Esmail Kiram of the Mora Napsa heir, according to Ulama.
Reacting to the same report, which said that another claimant to the sultanate, Rodinood Julaspi Kiram II, also dropped his claim to Sabah, Ulama said he was one of those considered "fake."
"He said he descended from Sultan Jamalul Kiram II who has no known heir so he is not real also," Ulama said.
Ulama vowed to come out with an official statement in the next few days to dispute the Backtiyal claim and that of Rodinood.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Sulu ruler issuing birth certificates to Filipinos in Sabah
Asia News Network
First Posted 17:48:00 07/09/2008
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- The issuance of birth certificates by the Sultanate of Sulu to illegal immigrants from the Philippines in Sabah has raised the question of sovereignty of Malaysia and the state, a party official said.
“How can this take place?” asked Democratic Action Party adviser Lim Kit Siang.
“It challenges the question of the sovereignty of Malaysia in Sabah and there is a disturbing implication in terms of long-term consequences because of the subsisting claim of the land in Sabah by the Filipinos," he said at the Parliament lobby Wednesday.
He said the issue was of great concern to the people in Sabah as the estimated number of illegal immigrants had exceeded the number of Sabahans.
“It makes Sabahans the strangers in their own land and this is why there is so much unhappiness among the people there,” he said.
He said there were about 100,000 to 140,000 illegal immigrants in Sabah in 1978 but the number had since risen to about 1.5 million.
Lim said he had made a copy of such a birth certificate and forwarded it to Deputy Home Minister Datuk Chor Chee Cheung. Lim said he hoped the Chor would make a ministerial statement in Parliament before the sitting adjourns on July 17.
Kota Kinabalu MP Hiew King Cheu said it was believed that the birth certificates had been recently distributed to Filipinos who were either born in Sabah or illegally migrated to the state.
“We want to know the motive behind this act,” he said. “We hope the government can investigate the case and solve the issue of land claim once and for all.”
Hiew said he would lodge a police report on the case when he returned to Kota Kinabalu on Thursday.
Malaysian authorities have been chasing out Filipinos from Sabah despite the existence of a legal claim by the Sulu Sultanate over the territory.
In 1658, the Sultanate of Brunei ceded the north-east portion of Borneo to the Sultan of Sulu as a reward for the Mindanao ruler’s help in winning a civil war in the Brunei Sultanate.
Today, Malaysia pays annual rentals to the heirs of the Sultan of Sulu, who have granted the Philippine government power of attorney to pursue a sovereign claim on their behalf.
But the claim has been placed in the back burner due to Manila’s fears of severing cordial economic and security ties with Kuala Lumpur. Ng Cheng Yee, The Star-ANN with a report from INQUIRER.net in Manila
First Posted 17:48:00 07/09/2008
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- The issuance of birth certificates by the Sultanate of Sulu to illegal immigrants from the Philippines in Sabah has raised the question of sovereignty of Malaysia and the state, a party official said.
“How can this take place?” asked Democratic Action Party adviser Lim Kit Siang.
“It challenges the question of the sovereignty of Malaysia in Sabah and there is a disturbing implication in terms of long-term consequences because of the subsisting claim of the land in Sabah by the Filipinos," he said at the Parliament lobby Wednesday.
He said the issue was of great concern to the people in Sabah as the estimated number of illegal immigrants had exceeded the number of Sabahans.
“It makes Sabahans the strangers in their own land and this is why there is so much unhappiness among the people there,” he said.
He said there were about 100,000 to 140,000 illegal immigrants in Sabah in 1978 but the number had since risen to about 1.5 million.
Lim said he had made a copy of such a birth certificate and forwarded it to Deputy Home Minister Datuk Chor Chee Cheung. Lim said he hoped the Chor would make a ministerial statement in Parliament before the sitting adjourns on July 17.
Kota Kinabalu MP Hiew King Cheu said it was believed that the birth certificates had been recently distributed to Filipinos who were either born in Sabah or illegally migrated to the state.
“We want to know the motive behind this act,” he said. “We hope the government can investigate the case and solve the issue of land claim once and for all.”
Hiew said he would lodge a police report on the case when he returned to Kota Kinabalu on Thursday.
Malaysian authorities have been chasing out Filipinos from Sabah despite the existence of a legal claim by the Sulu Sultanate over the territory.
In 1658, the Sultanate of Brunei ceded the north-east portion of Borneo to the Sultan of Sulu as a reward for the Mindanao ruler’s help in winning a civil war in the Brunei Sultanate.
Today, Malaysia pays annual rentals to the heirs of the Sultan of Sulu, who have granted the Philippine government power of attorney to pursue a sovereign claim on their behalf.
But the claim has been placed in the back burner due to Manila’s fears of severing cordial economic and security ties with Kuala Lumpur. Ng Cheng Yee, The Star-ANN with a report from INQUIRER.net in Manila
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Happy 110th Philippine Independence Day! Mabuhay ang Pilipinas!
The Philippine Declaration of Independence occurred on June 12, 1898 in the Philippines, where Filipino revolutionary forces under General Emilio Aguinaldo (later to become the Philippines' first Republican President) proclaimed the sovereignty and independence of the Philippine Islands from the colonial rule of Spain after the latter was defeated at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.
The declaration, however, was not recognized by the United States or Spain, as the Spanish government ceded the Philippines to the United States in the 1898 Treaty of Paris, in consideration for an indemnity for Spanish expenses and assets lost.
While the Philippines first celebrated its Independence Day on June 12, its independence was only recognized on July 4, 1946 by the United States. Henceforth, Independence Day was observed on July 4, but in the name of nationalism, and upon the advice of historians, Republic Act No. 4166 was signed into law by President Diosdado Macapagal on August 4, 1964, proclaiming June 12, which up to that time had been observed as Flag Day, as Independence Day.
The declaration, in the form of a proclamation, in the presence of a huge crowd, was done on June 12, 1898 at the ancestral home of General Emilio Aguinaldo between four and five in the afternoon in Cavite el Viejo (now Kawit), Cavite, some 30 kilometers South of Manila. The event saw the unfurling of the National Flag of the Philippines, made in Hong Kong by Mrs. Marcela Agoncillo, Lorenza Agoncillo and Delfina Herboza, and the performance of the Marcha Filipina Magdalo, as the Nation's National Anthem, now known as Lupang Hinirang, which was composed by Julian Felipe and played by the San Francisco de Malabon Marching band.
The Act of the Declaration of Independence was prepared and written by Senior Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista in Spanish, who also read the said declaration. A passage in the Declaration reminds one of another passage in the American Declaration of Independence. The Philippine Declaration was signed by ninety-eight persons, among them an American army officer who witnessed the proclamation. The proclamation of Philippine independence was, however, promulgated on the 1st of August, when many towns had already been organized under the rules laid down by the Dictatorial Government of General Aguinaldo.[2][3] The final paragraph states that there was a "stranger" (stranger in English translation — etranger in the original Spanish, possibly meaning foreigner) who attended the proceedings, Mr. L. M. Johnson, described as "a citizen of the U.S.A, a Coronel of Artillery".
The June 12 proclamation was later modified by another Proclamation done at Malolos, Bulacan, upon the insistence of Apolinario Mabini, who objected to the Original proclamation, which essentially placed the Philippines under the protection of the United States.
Philippine Independence Day (Filipino:Araw ng Kasarinlan, Araw ng Kalayaan) commemorating the country's declaration of independence from Spain on June 12, 1898 is a regular holiday in the Philippines.
The event was led by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo in his mansion on June 12, 1898. The flag of the Philippines, which was made in Hong Kong by Marcela Agoncillo, was first flown in that event. It is also where the Philippine National Anthem, composed by Julian Felipe, was first played by the San Francisco de Malabon band. The song was played under the name Marcha Filipina Magdalo, later renamed as Marcha Nacional Filipina.
The Official Flag of the Republic of the Philippines.The Philippines celebrated its Independence Day every July 4, the date in 1946 that the United States granted independence to the nation, until 1962, when President Diosdado Macapagal signed the Presidential Proclamation No. 28, changing the official celebration to June 12, the date in 1898 that Emilio Aguinaldo declared the nation's independence from Spain. Officially naming June 12 as Araw ng Kalayaan (Independence Day) and July 4 as Republic Day and Philippine-American Friendship Day.
On June 12, 1998, the nation celebrated its centennial year of Independence from Spain. The celebrations were held simultaneously nationwide by then President Fidel V. Ramos and Filipino communities worldwide. A commission was established for the said event, the National Centennial Commission headed by former Vice President Salvador Laurel presided all events around the country. One of the major projects of the commission was the Expo Pilipino, a grand showcase of the Philippines' growth as a nation for the last 100 years, located in the Clark Special Economic Zone (formerly Clark Air Base) in Angeles City, Pampanga.
The declaration, however, was not recognized by the United States or Spain, as the Spanish government ceded the Philippines to the United States in the 1898 Treaty of Paris, in consideration for an indemnity for Spanish expenses and assets lost.
While the Philippines first celebrated its Independence Day on June 12, its independence was only recognized on July 4, 1946 by the United States. Henceforth, Independence Day was observed on July 4, but in the name of nationalism, and upon the advice of historians, Republic Act No. 4166 was signed into law by President Diosdado Macapagal on August 4, 1964, proclaiming June 12, which up to that time had been observed as Flag Day, as Independence Day.
The declaration, in the form of a proclamation, in the presence of a huge crowd, was done on June 12, 1898 at the ancestral home of General Emilio Aguinaldo between four and five in the afternoon in Cavite el Viejo (now Kawit), Cavite, some 30 kilometers South of Manila. The event saw the unfurling of the National Flag of the Philippines, made in Hong Kong by Mrs. Marcela Agoncillo, Lorenza Agoncillo and Delfina Herboza, and the performance of the Marcha Filipina Magdalo, as the Nation's National Anthem, now known as Lupang Hinirang, which was composed by Julian Felipe and played by the San Francisco de Malabon Marching band.
The Act of the Declaration of Independence was prepared and written by Senior Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista in Spanish, who also read the said declaration. A passage in the Declaration reminds one of another passage in the American Declaration of Independence. The Philippine Declaration was signed by ninety-eight persons, among them an American army officer who witnessed the proclamation. The proclamation of Philippine independence was, however, promulgated on the 1st of August, when many towns had already been organized under the rules laid down by the Dictatorial Government of General Aguinaldo.[2][3] The final paragraph states that there was a "stranger" (stranger in English translation — etranger in the original Spanish, possibly meaning foreigner) who attended the proceedings, Mr. L. M. Johnson, described as "a citizen of the U.S.A, a Coronel of Artillery".
The June 12 proclamation was later modified by another Proclamation done at Malolos, Bulacan, upon the insistence of Apolinario Mabini, who objected to the Original proclamation, which essentially placed the Philippines under the protection of the United States.
Philippine Independence Day (Filipino:Araw ng Kasarinlan, Araw ng Kalayaan) commemorating the country's declaration of independence from Spain on June 12, 1898 is a regular holiday in the Philippines.
The event was led by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo in his mansion on June 12, 1898. The flag of the Philippines, which was made in Hong Kong by Marcela Agoncillo, was first flown in that event. It is also where the Philippine National Anthem, composed by Julian Felipe, was first played by the San Francisco de Malabon band. The song was played under the name Marcha Filipina Magdalo, later renamed as Marcha Nacional Filipina.
The Official Flag of the Republic of the Philippines.The Philippines celebrated its Independence Day every July 4, the date in 1946 that the United States granted independence to the nation, until 1962, when President Diosdado Macapagal signed the Presidential Proclamation No. 28, changing the official celebration to June 12, the date in 1898 that Emilio Aguinaldo declared the nation's independence from Spain. Officially naming June 12 as Araw ng Kalayaan (Independence Day) and July 4 as Republic Day and Philippine-American Friendship Day.
On June 12, 1998, the nation celebrated its centennial year of Independence from Spain. The celebrations were held simultaneously nationwide by then President Fidel V. Ramos and Filipino communities worldwide. A commission was established for the said event, the National Centennial Commission headed by former Vice President Salvador Laurel presided all events around the country. One of the major projects of the commission was the Expo Pilipino, a grand showcase of the Philippines' growth as a nation for the last 100 years, located in the Clark Special Economic Zone (formerly Clark Air Base) in Angeles City, Pampanga.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Misuari wants Int'l Court of Justice to settle Sabah claim
MindaNews
Sunday, 25 May 2008 17:10
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/24 May) – Moro leader Nur Misuari says he has no plans to attack Sabah but wants the International Court of Justice to settle the status of Sabah if Malaysia will not resolve the issue with the Bangsamoro “justly and peacefully.”
In his 68-minute “State of the Bangsamoro Republik address” Misuari told thousands of supporters at the parade grounds of the Rizal Memorial Colleges (RMC) that he was informed word had gone around in Malaysia that with his release, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) would invade Sabah.
“Did I ask you to make war or peace?” Misuari asked. The crowd said no.
“Your shouts give lie to all these accusations,” he said.
MNLF organizers placed the crowd at 30,000 although the city government on Friday had placed the number of unarmed MNLF members who arrived here from various parts of Mindanao, at 5,000.
Misuari, however, challenged the Malaysia to show proof that Sabah is theirs.
He said the Sabah issue should be brought to the International Court of Justice for resolution.
“We have plenty of brave lawyers who are ready to face them because Sabah belongs to us,” Misuari said.
One of the heirs of the Sultan of Sulu, had also spoken earlier onstage.
Misuari cited what he called “the pittance,” in reference to the lease Sabah pays the Sultan’s heirs, at 5,000 ringgit or about 27,000 Philippine pesos.
“What are we going to do? Anong gagawin natin kung ayaw nila magbayad more than 5,000 ringgits” he asked.
“Five thousand ringgits. That’s a pittance,” he repeated.
Misuari was arrested in an island off Sabah on November 24, 2001 for alleged illegal entry. Hew was turned over to the Philippine government on January 7, 2002, and was detained on charges of rebellion until he was allowed to post bail on April 25 this year, after payment of P50,000 bond. (MindaNews)
Sunday, 25 May 2008 17:10
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/24 May) – Moro leader Nur Misuari says he has no plans to attack Sabah but wants the International Court of Justice to settle the status of Sabah if Malaysia will not resolve the issue with the Bangsamoro “justly and peacefully.”
In his 68-minute “State of the Bangsamoro Republik address” Misuari told thousands of supporters at the parade grounds of the Rizal Memorial Colleges (RMC) that he was informed word had gone around in Malaysia that with his release, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) would invade Sabah.
“Did I ask you to make war or peace?” Misuari asked. The crowd said no.
“Your shouts give lie to all these accusations,” he said.
MNLF organizers placed the crowd at 30,000 although the city government on Friday had placed the number of unarmed MNLF members who arrived here from various parts of Mindanao, at 5,000.
Misuari, however, challenged the Malaysia to show proof that Sabah is theirs.
He said the Sabah issue should be brought to the International Court of Justice for resolution.
“We have plenty of brave lawyers who are ready to face them because Sabah belongs to us,” Misuari said.
One of the heirs of the Sultan of Sulu, had also spoken earlier onstage.
Misuari cited what he called “the pittance,” in reference to the lease Sabah pays the Sultan’s heirs, at 5,000 ringgit or about 27,000 Philippine pesos.
“What are we going to do? Anong gagawin natin kung ayaw nila magbayad more than 5,000 ringgits” he asked.
“Five thousand ringgits. That’s a pittance,” he repeated.
Misuari was arrested in an island off Sabah on November 24, 2001 for alleged illegal entry. Hew was turned over to the Philippine government on January 7, 2002, and was detained on charges of rebellion until he was allowed to post bail on April 25 this year, after payment of P50,000 bond. (MindaNews)
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Malaysia Not An Honest Broker
The quest for an honest broker
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:45:00 05/08/2008
MANILA, Philippines—Our traditional allies in the Mindanao peace process are Indonesia and Libya, Muslim nations that, however, have long established ties of friendship (in the case of Indonesia) and an appreciation of the secular framework of our republic (in the case of Libya). Our traditional antagonist, on the other hand, is Malaysia, whose birth as a nation the Philippines and Indonesia opposed because of the two nation’s claims on parts of North Borneo.
The Sabah question led the Philippines to support Indonesia’s policy of Konfrontasi with Malaysia, and the botched effort by the Marcos administration to provoke Sabah’s secession from Malaysia led, in turn, to Malaysian support for the Moro secessionist movement.
When Libya brokered a peace deal during the Marcos years with the Moro National Liberation Front, Malaysia lost a useful instrument to keep the Philippine government busy fighting secessionists at home, which prevented a revival of Philippine efforts to annex Sabah.
But then a split took place within the Moro nationalist ranks. Another bloc emerged, organized along Islamic lines: the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). And so, the Philippine government has had to pursue the peace process in Mindanao on two fronts: with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which has obtained observer status in the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), and with the MILF, which has been less successful in obtaining a similar level of recognition from the OIC.
This provided an opportunity for Malaysia—and helps explain the closeness between the MILF and the Malaysian government. MILF chief peace negotiator Mohagher Iqbal told Newsbreak that as far as his organization is concerned, Malaysia is “irreplaceable” and “a vital partner.”
Some years back, in “The GRP-MILF Peace Talks: Quo Vadis?”, political science professor Rizal G. Buendia wrote: “While the MILF is currently engaged in peace negotiations as the only ‘peaceful, civilized, and democratic way of solving the Bangsamoro problem,’ it repeatedly emphasizes that independence is the main agenda and framework for the formal talks. ‘There is no point to proceed if the negotiations will not lead to independence,’ declared the MILF negotiators. The sustained effort towards gathering popular support for a UN- and OIC-supervised referendum, following the East Timor (now Timor-Leste) case, is a move to achieve independence using the institution and process of democracy. For the MILF, the conduct of a referendum is one of the options or mechanisms that it can utilize outside of the peace talks. It is the exercise of the ‘plebiscitary right to secede.’”
Viewed from the perspective of the Philippines’ traditional allies in the peace process—Indonesia and Libya—it is interesting to note that the MILF sees no reason to introduce Indonesia as a facilitator in the ongoing peace talks as a substitute for Malaysia. The closeness of the MILF to Malaysian authorities has obviously influenced this view, because Malaysia is wary of Indonesia, whose Kalimantan provinces comprise the largest portion of Borneo.
And Malaysia itself has demonstrated that it prefers to monopolize dealings with the MILF. It rejected the idea that USIP, an American federal institution, get involved in the negotiations between the government of the Philippines (GRP) and the MILF. Cultivating the MILF prevents Malaysia from being frozen out of any potential resolution of the decades-old Moro rebellion in Mindanao.
Malaysia’s national interest requires that its ultimate aim be the protection of its sovereignty over Sabah, with its vast natural resources and relatively low population. It is not in Malaysia’s interest to have a situation where peace is established, if it results in a Moro government that is not friendly to Malaysia, or at least susceptible to its influence.
Just recently, the Malaysian government announced that another part of Borneo, Sarawak (which adjoins Sabah), has been identified as the country’s future rice bowl. The Asia Sentinel reports that nearly half of Sarawak’s territory has been earmarked for transformation into rice paddies. Malaysia’s vital strategic interest in protecting its Borneo territories has therefore increased, adding the dimension of food security.
A buffer zone, composed of an autonomous Muslim Mindanao region where the influence of the Philippine government can be held at bay, is what serves Malaysia’s interests, and not necessarily peace. Malaysia will support peace talks if their objective is in harmony with that country’s self-interest: any deviation from that, and Malaysia would much rather keep things in a state of perpetual negotiation. This means that if it needs to, in a sense, shake things up by diplomatic posturing, it will do so, regardless of how this affects the Philippines.
Malaysia has announced that it is prepared to withdraw from the GRP-MILF peace process. This has jolted our government into frantically appealing to Malaysia to stay involved, an appeal echoed by the MILF, for obvious reasons: the MILF’s ultimate ace in the hole is the threat of resuming active hostilities; Malaysia’s card is that ditching the peace process will confront the Philippine government with a resumption of fighting, which complicates its relationship with the United States, and ongoing efforts to develop Mindanao.
It’s well worth pondering, at this point, that the advantages Malaysia and the MILF enjoy at present is entirely the doing of our government. The Philippines brought Malaysia into the peace process; it contributed to strengthening the MILF’s bargaining position by accepting that Malaysia would serve as the MILF’s patron in the peace talks. Our government, in trying to please everyone, pleases no one and hasn’t brought peace any closer after several years of increasing Malaysian influence in the peace talks.
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:45:00 05/08/2008
MANILA, Philippines—Our traditional allies in the Mindanao peace process are Indonesia and Libya, Muslim nations that, however, have long established ties of friendship (in the case of Indonesia) and an appreciation of the secular framework of our republic (in the case of Libya). Our traditional antagonist, on the other hand, is Malaysia, whose birth as a nation the Philippines and Indonesia opposed because of the two nation’s claims on parts of North Borneo.
The Sabah question led the Philippines to support Indonesia’s policy of Konfrontasi with Malaysia, and the botched effort by the Marcos administration to provoke Sabah’s secession from Malaysia led, in turn, to Malaysian support for the Moro secessionist movement.
When Libya brokered a peace deal during the Marcos years with the Moro National Liberation Front, Malaysia lost a useful instrument to keep the Philippine government busy fighting secessionists at home, which prevented a revival of Philippine efforts to annex Sabah.
But then a split took place within the Moro nationalist ranks. Another bloc emerged, organized along Islamic lines: the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). And so, the Philippine government has had to pursue the peace process in Mindanao on two fronts: with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which has obtained observer status in the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), and with the MILF, which has been less successful in obtaining a similar level of recognition from the OIC.
This provided an opportunity for Malaysia—and helps explain the closeness between the MILF and the Malaysian government. MILF chief peace negotiator Mohagher Iqbal told Newsbreak that as far as his organization is concerned, Malaysia is “irreplaceable” and “a vital partner.”
Some years back, in “The GRP-MILF Peace Talks: Quo Vadis?”, political science professor Rizal G. Buendia wrote: “While the MILF is currently engaged in peace negotiations as the only ‘peaceful, civilized, and democratic way of solving the Bangsamoro problem,’ it repeatedly emphasizes that independence is the main agenda and framework for the formal talks. ‘There is no point to proceed if the negotiations will not lead to independence,’ declared the MILF negotiators. The sustained effort towards gathering popular support for a UN- and OIC-supervised referendum, following the East Timor (now Timor-Leste) case, is a move to achieve independence using the institution and process of democracy. For the MILF, the conduct of a referendum is one of the options or mechanisms that it can utilize outside of the peace talks. It is the exercise of the ‘plebiscitary right to secede.’”
Viewed from the perspective of the Philippines’ traditional allies in the peace process—Indonesia and Libya—it is interesting to note that the MILF sees no reason to introduce Indonesia as a facilitator in the ongoing peace talks as a substitute for Malaysia. The closeness of the MILF to Malaysian authorities has obviously influenced this view, because Malaysia is wary of Indonesia, whose Kalimantan provinces comprise the largest portion of Borneo.
And Malaysia itself has demonstrated that it prefers to monopolize dealings with the MILF. It rejected the idea that USIP, an American federal institution, get involved in the negotiations between the government of the Philippines (GRP) and the MILF. Cultivating the MILF prevents Malaysia from being frozen out of any potential resolution of the decades-old Moro rebellion in Mindanao.
Malaysia’s national interest requires that its ultimate aim be the protection of its sovereignty over Sabah, with its vast natural resources and relatively low population. It is not in Malaysia’s interest to have a situation where peace is established, if it results in a Moro government that is not friendly to Malaysia, or at least susceptible to its influence.
Just recently, the Malaysian government announced that another part of Borneo, Sarawak (which adjoins Sabah), has been identified as the country’s future rice bowl. The Asia Sentinel reports that nearly half of Sarawak’s territory has been earmarked for transformation into rice paddies. Malaysia’s vital strategic interest in protecting its Borneo territories has therefore increased, adding the dimension of food security.
A buffer zone, composed of an autonomous Muslim Mindanao region where the influence of the Philippine government can be held at bay, is what serves Malaysia’s interests, and not necessarily peace. Malaysia will support peace talks if their objective is in harmony with that country’s self-interest: any deviation from that, and Malaysia would much rather keep things in a state of perpetual negotiation. This means that if it needs to, in a sense, shake things up by diplomatic posturing, it will do so, regardless of how this affects the Philippines.
Malaysia has announced that it is prepared to withdraw from the GRP-MILF peace process. This has jolted our government into frantically appealing to Malaysia to stay involved, an appeal echoed by the MILF, for obvious reasons: the MILF’s ultimate ace in the hole is the threat of resuming active hostilities; Malaysia’s card is that ditching the peace process will confront the Philippine government with a resumption of fighting, which complicates its relationship with the United States, and ongoing efforts to develop Mindanao.
It’s well worth pondering, at this point, that the advantages Malaysia and the MILF enjoy at present is entirely the doing of our government. The Philippines brought Malaysia into the peace process; it contributed to strengthening the MILF’s bargaining position by accepting that Malaysia would serve as the MILF’s patron in the peace talks. Our government, in trying to please everyone, pleases no one and hasn’t brought peace any closer after several years of increasing Malaysian influence in the peace talks.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Malaysia Peace Talks Pullout Linked to Sabah Claim?
Malaysia Peace Talks Pullout Linked to Sabah Claim?
Originally posted at wordpress.com by midfield
Is the reported Malaysian decision to “quit” the Mindanao peace talks and pull out its 41 peace keepers talks linked to the issue of the Philippine’s’ long-standing claim to North Borneo, known as the Malaysian State of Sabah?
We cannot help but raise this question, given that the Sultanate of Sulu and Sabah has now launched a website asserting its claim, http://www.royalsulu.com/issues.html. There is also a revealing report made by Al Jazeera television that “as many as eight people are claiming to be the “legitimate” Sultan of Sulu and Sabah. Here’s the YouTube link to the report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVwErDFfRno”
Former U. P. College of Law dean Merlin Magallona reports that “The present Baseline Law, Republic Act No. 3046 of 1961, was amended by Republic Act No. 5446 of 1968. Section 2 of the present Baseline Law provides that “The definition of the baselines of the territorial sea of the Philippine Archipelago as provided in this Act [Rep. Act No. 5446] is without prejudice to the delineation of the baselines of the territorial sea around the territory of Sabah, situated in North Borneo, over which the Republic of the Philippines has acquired dominion and sovereignty. (Emphasis added).
But despite this clear mandate of the law ,Dean Magallona notes that “House Bill No. 3216 (with Congressman Antonio V. Cuenco as principal author) and its counterpart in the Senate (S. No. 1467, with Senator Trillanes as principal author) has deliberately eliminated Section 2 of Rep. Act. No. 5446 in reference to Philippine sovereignty over Sabah, as shown in the deliberations of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on 20 November 2007.”
The eminent professor, and acknowledged expert on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) warns that “in effect, if the Cuenco bill would be enacted into law, it would operate as repeal of the Sabah provision of the present Baseline Law. It would easily be interpreted as an abdication of Sabah as part of Philippine territory.”
Magallona goes on to reveal that “In place of the Sabah provision, the Cuenco Bill contains a “without prejudice clause” which provides: “The delineation of baselines as provided in this Act shall be without prejudice to any claims to any contested portions of the national territory or maritime zones and jurisdictions of the Philippines in accordance with international law and under appropriate international dispute resolution mechanisms.” (Emphasis added)
According to Dean Magallona “the clear and disastrous implication of the Cuenco bill is that it radically changed the status of Sabah in reference to the interest of the Republic from the unequivocal affirmation of Philippine sovereignty and dominion over Sabah under the present Baseline La wto a mere statement of claim to a contested portion of the national territory to be settled by some international dispute resolution mechanism under the Cuenco bill, resulting in the derogation of Philippine sovereignty over Sabah.”
Magallona, a former undersecretary in the Dept. of Foreign Affairs, “the present Baseline Law is the only articulation of Philippine sovereignty over Sabah by legislative will.”
“It is the only authoritative pronouncement of territorial sovereignty of the Philippines with respect to Sabah, “ Magallogna points out
“So much so that when the Philippines presented oral arguments before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its Application for Permission to Intervene in the Case Concerning Sovereignty Over Pulau Ligitan and Pulau Sipadan between Malaya and Indonesia in 2001, it relied crucially on Section 2 of Republic Act No. 5446, as quoted above.”
“Even as the Philippines did not succeed in its intervention, the ICJ made it clear in its judgment that “it remains cognizant of the position stated by … the Philippines in the present proceedings,” according the the international law expert.
For the first time ever, on account of this intervention case, “the Philippine sovereignty over Sabah was demonstrated in the proceedings of the highest tribunal of the international community based inter alia on the strength of legislative proclamation of the Republic’s sovereignty over Sabah as provided in the present Baseline Law, which the Cuenco Bill now seeks to repudiate.”
It is a historical fact that North Borneo had been ‘leased in perpetuity’ by the Sultanate of Sulu to the British East India Company which then turned over the territory when the Federation of Malaya was formed in 1963. Such action has been described by the heirs of Sultan Jamalul Kiram as a blatant violation of the terms of the lease.
While Malaysian has effectively retained full control over Sabah, it is also on record that as recent as 2003 it has been paying “cession” fees to the Sultanate, based on notices transmitted by the Malaysian embassy in Manila. It is also asserted that under international law that the term ‘perpetuity’ is reckoned legally as lasting a period of 99 years. If this is so, then simple arithmetic would indicate that the lease has, in fact, expired. (At least one account on the Internet indicates the lease is 130 years past due.)
The website of the Sultanate of Sulu and Sabah asserts that at the very least, with Malaysia supposedly earning up to 100 billion dollars per year from the exploitation of the area’s rich natural resources (this figure is unverified), the sultanate would, by its own estimates, be entitled to a share of some 10 billion dollars, a huge amount the the sultanate says could go to uplifting the lives of the people of Sulu.
Draw your conclusions.
Originally posted at wordpress.com by midfield
Is the reported Malaysian decision to “quit” the Mindanao peace talks and pull out its 41 peace keepers talks linked to the issue of the Philippine’s’ long-standing claim to North Borneo, known as the Malaysian State of Sabah?
We cannot help but raise this question, given that the Sultanate of Sulu and Sabah has now launched a website asserting its claim, http://www.royalsulu.com/issues.html. There is also a revealing report made by Al Jazeera television that “as many as eight people are claiming to be the “legitimate” Sultan of Sulu and Sabah. Here’s the YouTube link to the report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVwErDFfRno”
Former U. P. College of Law dean Merlin Magallona reports that “The present Baseline Law, Republic Act No. 3046 of 1961, was amended by Republic Act No. 5446 of 1968. Section 2 of the present Baseline Law provides that “The definition of the baselines of the territorial sea of the Philippine Archipelago as provided in this Act [Rep. Act No. 5446] is without prejudice to the delineation of the baselines of the territorial sea around the territory of Sabah, situated in North Borneo, over which the Republic of the Philippines has acquired dominion and sovereignty. (Emphasis added).
But despite this clear mandate of the law ,Dean Magallona notes that “House Bill No. 3216 (with Congressman Antonio V. Cuenco as principal author) and its counterpart in the Senate (S. No. 1467, with Senator Trillanes as principal author) has deliberately eliminated Section 2 of Rep. Act. No. 5446 in reference to Philippine sovereignty over Sabah, as shown in the deliberations of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on 20 November 2007.”
The eminent professor, and acknowledged expert on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) warns that “in effect, if the Cuenco bill would be enacted into law, it would operate as repeal of the Sabah provision of the present Baseline Law. It would easily be interpreted as an abdication of Sabah as part of Philippine territory.”
Magallona goes on to reveal that “In place of the Sabah provision, the Cuenco Bill contains a “without prejudice clause” which provides: “The delineation of baselines as provided in this Act shall be without prejudice to any claims to any contested portions of the national territory or maritime zones and jurisdictions of the Philippines in accordance with international law and under appropriate international dispute resolution mechanisms.” (Emphasis added)
According to Dean Magallona “the clear and disastrous implication of the Cuenco bill is that it radically changed the status of Sabah in reference to the interest of the Republic from the unequivocal affirmation of Philippine sovereignty and dominion over Sabah under the present Baseline La wto a mere statement of claim to a contested portion of the national territory to be settled by some international dispute resolution mechanism under the Cuenco bill, resulting in the derogation of Philippine sovereignty over Sabah.”
Magallona, a former undersecretary in the Dept. of Foreign Affairs, “the present Baseline Law is the only articulation of Philippine sovereignty over Sabah by legislative will.”
“It is the only authoritative pronouncement of territorial sovereignty of the Philippines with respect to Sabah, “ Magallogna points out
“So much so that when the Philippines presented oral arguments before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its Application for Permission to Intervene in the Case Concerning Sovereignty Over Pulau Ligitan and Pulau Sipadan between Malaya and Indonesia in 2001, it relied crucially on Section 2 of Republic Act No. 5446, as quoted above.”
“Even as the Philippines did not succeed in its intervention, the ICJ made it clear in its judgment that “it remains cognizant of the position stated by … the Philippines in the present proceedings,” according the the international law expert.
For the first time ever, on account of this intervention case, “the Philippine sovereignty over Sabah was demonstrated in the proceedings of the highest tribunal of the international community based inter alia on the strength of legislative proclamation of the Republic’s sovereignty over Sabah as provided in the present Baseline Law, which the Cuenco Bill now seeks to repudiate.”
It is a historical fact that North Borneo had been ‘leased in perpetuity’ by the Sultanate of Sulu to the British East India Company which then turned over the territory when the Federation of Malaya was formed in 1963. Such action has been described by the heirs of Sultan Jamalul Kiram as a blatant violation of the terms of the lease.
While Malaysian has effectively retained full control over Sabah, it is also on record that as recent as 2003 it has been paying “cession” fees to the Sultanate, based on notices transmitted by the Malaysian embassy in Manila. It is also asserted that under international law that the term ‘perpetuity’ is reckoned legally as lasting a period of 99 years. If this is so, then simple arithmetic would indicate that the lease has, in fact, expired. (At least one account on the Internet indicates the lease is 130 years past due.)
The website of the Sultanate of Sulu and Sabah asserts that at the very least, with Malaysia supposedly earning up to 100 billion dollars per year from the exploitation of the area’s rich natural resources (this figure is unverified), the sultanate would, by its own estimates, be entitled to a share of some 10 billion dollars, a huge amount the the sultanate says could go to uplifting the lives of the people of Sulu.
Draw your conclusions.
Friday, April 18, 2008
City on the Edge of Forever
Originally posted at http://www.hanahou.com
The remnants of Typhoon Mita, which had hit the eastern coasts of the Philippines hard the night before, enveloped Manila in a solid, wet wall of gray. It was the second hurricane that week. But life went on as usual: An unbroken line of red taillights crept down Roxas Boulevard toward The Mall of Asia, where Manileños, like their American brothers and sisters, were ferociously shopping for Christmas. Everyone was just as unruffled by the small earthquakes that had rocked the city since my landing two days earlier. A little tremor now and then is certainly no sweat for people living in the geologically restless Philippines. A raised eyebrow and a wry grin was generally the only acknowledgment that the earth had just shivered beneath our feet … again.
And, oh yes, there was also a coup. Maybe you read about it. Long story short: A group of rebels had holed up in the Peninsula Hotel in the upscale Makati City area and refused to leave unless President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo stepped down. She didn’t. You don’t get picked by Forbes magazine as the world’s fourth most powerful woman by being skittish, I suppose. A few tense hours passed while the rebels awaited the popular uprising they hoped would coalesce. It didn’t. The rebels surrendered, and that was that. The whole thing took six hours, start to finish. A citywide curfew was imposed that night, and by the next morning, Manila had returned to the rollicking, barely contained chaos it calls normal.
But back at the largest mall in Asia (called—what else?—The Mall of Asia), people went on shopping, ice-skating, eating, movie-going—far too busy to participate in a popular uprising. If my cab driver hadn’t explained the situation, I wouldn’t have known anything unusual was going down. “Bahala na!” he’d said through his grin, a phrase that well describes the Filipino outlook. It means
“Whatever may come,” and “Leave it to God,” and “S**t happens.” Like banzai!, it also prefaces reckless acts of gumption—a coup, for instance.
Later that evening, confined by the curfew, I make my way to the hotel bar. “Budweiser, Joe?” says my bartender. I tell him my name’s Michael, and he chuckles at my naiveté. Filipinos call random Americans “Joe,” he explains, a holdover from the days when most Americans in the Philippines were servicemen or “GI Joes.” I ask for “something local,” and he pours a San Miguel beer. He’s curious about what I, a Kano (another slang for “American”), think of his hometown.
“It’s been a busy two days,” I say, “I’ve seen earthquakes, typhoons and …”
“And a mutiny!” he says, laughing as he pours himself a drink. “That’s Manila! You never know what’s coming. It’s crazy, but it’s never boring.”
“Bahala na.” I shrug.
“Bahala na!” he replies.
Manila is a freewheeling, riotous blur of color, sound and odor, a simultaneous party and hangover where anything goes and often does. As a third-world metropolis of 12 million people—the most densely populated city in the world—it’s afflicted with the usual problems of overcrowding and grit. Still, Filipinos are among the happiest, friendliest, most unassailably cheerful people on Earth. In 2007, a global research firm found that Pinoys rate second only to Asian Indians in optimism and happiness. Suggesting again some truth to the old saw westerners love to repeat but never believe: Money really doesn’t equal happiness.
“Manila’s feral,” Carlos Celdran tells me over semi-cold San Miguels. “It’s the wild west.” Carlos is an actor and performance artist who runs an artists’ co-op near Remedios Circle in the hip (think downscale Greenwich Village) area of Malate. He’s outspoken about all things Filipino; while he’s quick to excoriate Manila’s problems, he’s also clearly—and deeply—in love with his city. “There’s a poetry here,” he says. “If you look under the surface, you’re going to find a city rich in history, with museums, shops, cafés. Manila’s always been gritty; the cacophony, the dirt—it’s part of the character. Once you can hear through the cacophony, you’re going to hear the poetry. If you can’t find beauty in Manila, you can’t find it anywhere.”
Carlos invites me to join his popular walking tour through what he calls the soul of Manila, Intramuros (literally “within the walls”). Built at the mouth of the Pasig River in the sixteenth century, Intramuros is the walled city from which Spain exerted control over its farthest-flung colony. We begin at Fort Santiago, the garrison that protected the Spanish colonists from the huddled masses beyond the walls. The Philippines’ Spanish discoverer, Miguel López de Legazpi, apparently put a good deal of thought into choosing the fort’s namesake, Santiago Matamoros (literally, Saint James, Killer of Muslims). Fort Santiago was the stronghold from which the Spanish established dominion over the Muslims who’d been trading (and proselytizing) in the Philippines centuries before the Spanish arrived in 1565. Today, Intramuros is one of only two places left in Manila where one can experience the ambiance of the Spanish colonial period.
Americans might remember Intramuros for the role it played in the Second World War; the Japanese occupied and later mined the area. Douglas MacArthur, returning as promised, opted not to risk ground troops in the booby-trapped maze of the old city. Instead, the Americans bombed Manila more or less indiscriminately; while they succeeded in dislodging the 3,000 or so Japanese soldiers, more than 100,000 Filipinos died in the crossfire. (Grim Filipino humor: MacArthur returned, but we wish he hadn’t). When the dust settled, whatever remained of Intramuros, the buildings the Japanese hadn’t destroyed, was gone. Except for the baroque San Agustin Church, miraculously the only building left standing, everything a visitor sees in Intramuros today is a reconstruction.
It’s a deeply felt narrative in Manila, one of the defining stories of its culture. Before the war, Manila enjoyed a reputation as Southeast Asia’s most modern, cosmopolitan city. But in four short weeks, from Feb. 3 to March 3, 1945, it was reduced from the Pearl of the Orient to the second most devastated allied city of the war (Warsaw took first prize). While it has been rebuilt, it has never recovered its prewar character. Today, wandering among the ochre-colored walls and tranquil lily ponds of Fort Santiago, redolent with approximated old-world charm, that history seems a near-distant echo, a voluble ghost.
On the evening of my visit, though, a holier kind of ghost drifted through Intramuros. Once a year, churches from throughout the country transport their hallowed images of the Virgin Mary to Manila and parade them through the streets. This was to be a banner year, with more than seventy figures scheduled to participate. During the day, Intramuros had been abuzz with people dressing the figures in elaborate gold-embroidered robes and festooning their carrozas, or carriages, with lilies and orchids, with candles and electric lights. As night fell, thousands of devotees—beauty queens in gossamer dresses, little girls with angel wings, steely-eyed men in military uniform—followed the Marys to strains of “Ave Maria” and “Silent Night.” It was part procession, part celebration: The entire population of one town accompanied its Mary, singing and dancing behind her carroza. Darkness gathered, and all the long suffering recorded in the streets of Intramuros, all the stains and grit of today’s Manila faded into the blue. The Marys floated past, their angelic faces illuminated by lamps at once electric and divine. Their wooden eyes, cast earthward in compassion or raised heavenward in rapture, delivered a message in symbol. None of that matters, they seemed to say. Trust in God. Bahala na.
“Manileños come to Binondo for only two reasons,” says Ivan Man Dy. “To eat and to shop.” I have come to eat. Binondo is Manila’s Chinatown, possibly the world’s first and oldest. Unlike most other Chinatowns, or perhaps any other Chinatown, it’s centered on a massive Catholic church. I meet Ivan in front its stained, 411-year-old façade, the only part of the original church to survive the bombing. The unusual design of its bell tower exemplifies the East-meets-West fusion that characterizes not only Chinatown but Manila as a whole: It’s an eight-sided pagoda.
The Chinese arrived in Manila close on the heels of the Spanish in the sixteenth century, supplying the labor and the commercial muscle for Spain’s developing colony. Because there were few Chinese women, they intermarried with the indigenous Malay Tagalog people. Because they were considered heathens and thus prevented from integrating into Spanish Catholic society, the ever-pragmatic Chinese converted to Christianity and took Hispanic names. Binondo became the locus of this utterly unique Malay/Chinese/ Spanish/Christian (and later American) “chop suey” culture, as Ivan calls it. As a result, one finds curious syntheses, such as a sidewalk shrine with a crucifix flanked by sticks of burning incense, a brace of Chinese stone lions guarding the entry to a church, or street vendors hawking Buddhist good luck charms bearing images of the Virgin Mary rather than Kwan Yin.
Like the Chinatown of my native New York, Binondo is where you go for some of the best cheap eats in town. Ivan, a self-styled “streetwalker” (though he wasn’t aware of the double-entendre, he says, when he printed the word on his lapel button), leads an eating tour through the warren of Binondo’s narrow streets. At open-air stalls and in hole-in-the-wall eateries, we sample dim sum, siopao (the meat-filled bun known to Hawai‘i as manapua), a peasant rice soup from Fujian. At one stall, Ivan passes out eggs dyed a radioactively bright magenta. I fear that a long-dreaded moment has arrived: I’m to be peer-shamed into sampling balut, an infamous Filipino delicacy—pickled duck embryo, avec bones, feet, beak, feathers. A food so challenging (okay, I’ll say it: disgusting) that contestants on Fear Factor were forced to choke it down for money. Some couldn’t. Just as I feel a sudden bout of vegetarianism coming on, I discover that it’s a harmless tea egg—a hard-boiled chicken egg stewed in a broth of salty tea, a street food popular throughout China. Odd at first, but tasty.
We turn off the street at an unmarked doorway and walk down a long, dark hall. At the end, a surprise: an open-air courtyard done in art deco style, painted a hotter pink than the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Here, amid the garish influence of 1930s America, in the heart of a Catholic Chinatown with a Spanish cathedral, we eat lumpia—a traditional Filipino deep-fried meat and vegetable roll. “Everything is a mixture here,” Ivan says with what appears to be a little pride. “We look Malay, eat Chinese food, pray to Spanish saints and imitate Frank Sinatra so perfectly you’d think he’s still alive.”
Walking tours are an excellent introduction for a tourist and may get you safely through places like Binondo where tourists don’t usually venture alone. But one measure of a great city is, for me, what happens when you get lost in it. I pointed to an area that on my map was labeled simply “textile market.” The cabbie hesitated; he spoke little English, but his expression was easy to translate: You sure, Joe?
I got in the cab. I was sure. I was ready.
I wasn’t ready. As we neared the market area, the crowds swelled, traffic clogged the streets. An armada of dilapidated tricycles called “poor man’s taxis” and overstuffed Jeepneys (garishly decorated Jeep minivans that serve as public transportation) inched ever deeper toward some heart of shopping darkness. I stepped out of the cab and into the ongoing convulsion of hot and sticky commerce that is Baclaran market on Bonifacio Day, a national holiday many Filipinos spend shopping for Christmas.
Baclaran is one of three major street markets in metro Manila. The most unusual is the profusion of stalls congregated around Quiapo Church, where vendors sell a variety of religious icons and paraphernalia, some Christian—cherubic baby Jesus dolls and Virgin Mary statues—and some, well, not so Christian, like what the locals call “voodoo cures”: herbs and potions that claim to be everything from vegetable Viagra to abortion-inducers (and this on the doorstep of one of the city’s main Catholic churches). Then there’s the mother of all street markets, a place where even Manileños fear to tread, but for a bargain, they will: Divisoria, an utterly bewildering labyrinth where you can buy bulk items fresh off the boat from China, mostly. Christmas decorations, clothing, hectares of plastic gimcracks, mountains of pork rinds, which are to Filipinos what potato chips are to Americans. If you want something cheaper than what you’d pay at Divisoria, you’ll have to inherit it, steal it or make it yourself.
Baclaran is by comparison a little tamer but still respectably rambunctious, a good place for getting lost. As the only tourist I see—which I take as a promising sign—I draw steady attention, though all of it friendly. Almost everything here is packed in bale form: bales of rubber flip-flops, bales of ornamental fans, bales of women’s underwear stacked a storey high. “Hey Joe!” calls out a guy waving a white tank top he’s pulled from a bale, “You can be like Die Hard! Cheap!” Untempted, I move off the main drag and into the tight side streets, where everyone is pressed together in a sweaty human river. Passing what must be the food court, where feral cats stalk the underworld beneath stalls selling Asian vegetables, balut and chestnuts roasting in repurposed oil drums (it is Christmas, after all), I hear a cry of “Tahooooo!” I stop to buy a cup of taho, warm, soft tofu mixed with carmelized sugar, a delicious—and safe—treat so far as street food goes. So I tell myself.
For Ivan and Carlos, as for many Filipinos I’ve met, the ragged charm of old Manila and the combustible street markets like Baclaran are a counterweight to the antiseptic mall culture now sweeping Manila. While the malls offer air-conditioned respite from the hellacious Philippine heat and relief from the noise and grit, they’re homogenizing a city still in search of its own identity. There’s a concern that Manila may be Starbucked and Banana Republicked—First Worlded, if you will—to death before something authentically Filipino has a chance to develop after four centuries of colonialism. “The soul of Manila isn’t in the malls,” Ivan had said. “It’s in Intramuros, Quiapo, Binondo, the street markets.”
As frenzied as a market like Baclaran is—with the chaos, the noise, the brine of exhaust in the air—there’s a reassuring orderliness to it. As if by social contract, the shoppers jostle but never push, and everyone manages to keep out of everyone else’s way, even smiling with strangers. I shudder to picture what 5,000 New Yorkers jammed together in near-equatorial heat like this might do to each other. But these, you’ll remember, are the second-happiest people on Earth. A woman with a bundle on her head bumps me as we’re borne on the irresistible human current. She labors under her burden, and I’m hopelessly lost, but we exchange a laugh at our plight that reaches across our separate worlds.
She asks where I’m from; her perfect English surprises me.
“America.”
“Oh, America!” she says with an unabashed admiration that’s becoming rare in the world these days. “I have family in Detroit!” She points to the bundle on her head. “This is for them.” We talk about our families, our jobs. She works in a call center doing customer service for an American company, a growing industry in the Philippines. This is the first year she’s been able to send gifts to her relatives abroad, and though she hates working nights, she says it’s worth it for the salary: $300 a month. “I’m rich!” she jokes.
The frenetic day closes with a blazing sunset that turns the city briefly to gold, and Manila gears up for another episode of its legendary nightlife. After dark, Manila is transformed from shabby leviathan to a massive carnival ride; as deep as their devotion to heavenly pursuits may be, the Manileños’ commitment to an earthly party runs just as deep.
Maybe it’s ironic that the rebels chose Makati City as ground zero for their abortive coup. They were hoping for a resurgence of the nonviolent “people power” movement of 1986, when masses of Manila’s frustrated and dispossessed swept Ferdinand Marcos from power. But Makati is the last place you’ll find Manila’s frustrated and dispossessed. Here among its gritless avenues, tony malls and trendy restaurants, upwardly mobile Filipinos, expats and tourists come to play. The elegant Greenbelt Mall (“the country’s first premier lifestyle center,” according to its PR) is home to high-end shops like Prada and Armani, and the Apple Store (I can’t resist an Apple Store) is not only better stocked than those in Honolulu; it’s more expensive. For many, Makati represents the model of what Manila might one day become: The Pearl of the Orient redux.
At the outdoor tables by Havana Café, young Filipinas in knee-high boots and miniskirts vie for the attentions of Kanos downing an alarming number of San Miguels, and Chinese businessmen take leisurely, reptilian pulls on Cuban cigars. The Starbucks and the Seattle’s Best (within twenty feet of one another) are full with decked-out tourists dosing up on fuel for their nocturnal missions. Most are headed to the clubs for drinking and dancing, others to the hostess bars along P. Burgos Street, but I want to scope out something a bit more under the radar, a little live music joint called Saguijo on the not-so-mean back streets of Makati.
In official terms, Saguijo qualifies as a dive. But it’s a popular venue for many of the city’s up-and-coming bands that are rarely if ever heard beyond the shores of the Philippines, but which nevertheless thoroughly rock. Even though most of the music derives from American alt-rock and grunge (much of it sung in Tagalog), it hasn’t yet become a victim of its own
success, prefabricated, overproduced and mass marketed. It was, to revive a tired cliché, really about the music. Impressed by the unpretentious musicianship, I close the place down. A first for me in years.
Back near my hotel in Malate at 3 a.m., the streets are still filled with revelers going in and out of the bars by Remedios Circle or trying their luck at the Casino Filipino. My plane leaves in a few hours, though, so I decide to pack it in. But the throb and noise of a city seeking temporary salvation keeps me up, and I head back out. Passing a hopping bar bright with neon at about 4 a.m., I hear strains of Sinatra. But it’s not a stereo system; it’s a videoke (i.e., video karaoke) parlor where an improbably short Filipino man in gingham pants and a fedora belts out a heartfelt and pitch-perfect finale to “My Way.”
On the way to the airport, my cabbie asks what I’m doing in Manila. “I’m writing a story about the city,” I say, “for a magazine.”
I see his eyes widen in the rearview mirror. “Oh,” he says. “Well, I hope you’re going to write about the good things.”
That reaction says a lot about this city and the people I’ve met here. In that simple statement is the knowledge that things aren’t quite what they could be. But they see past that; they see what may yet be. They know that their pearl is unique in the world. That their restless metropolis perched on the shores of a shivering island is a continuous act of becoming, an article of faith. HH
The remnants of Typhoon Mita, which had hit the eastern coasts of the Philippines hard the night before, enveloped Manila in a solid, wet wall of gray. It was the second hurricane that week. But life went on as usual: An unbroken line of red taillights crept down Roxas Boulevard toward The Mall of Asia, where Manileños, like their American brothers and sisters, were ferociously shopping for Christmas. Everyone was just as unruffled by the small earthquakes that had rocked the city since my landing two days earlier. A little tremor now and then is certainly no sweat for people living in the geologically restless Philippines. A raised eyebrow and a wry grin was generally the only acknowledgment that the earth had just shivered beneath our feet … again.
And, oh yes, there was also a coup. Maybe you read about it. Long story short: A group of rebels had holed up in the Peninsula Hotel in the upscale Makati City area and refused to leave unless President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo stepped down. She didn’t. You don’t get picked by Forbes magazine as the world’s fourth most powerful woman by being skittish, I suppose. A few tense hours passed while the rebels awaited the popular uprising they hoped would coalesce. It didn’t. The rebels surrendered, and that was that. The whole thing took six hours, start to finish. A citywide curfew was imposed that night, and by the next morning, Manila had returned to the rollicking, barely contained chaos it calls normal.
But back at the largest mall in Asia (called—what else?—The Mall of Asia), people went on shopping, ice-skating, eating, movie-going—far too busy to participate in a popular uprising. If my cab driver hadn’t explained the situation, I wouldn’t have known anything unusual was going down. “Bahala na!” he’d said through his grin, a phrase that well describes the Filipino outlook. It means
“Whatever may come,” and “Leave it to God,” and “S**t happens.” Like banzai!, it also prefaces reckless acts of gumption—a coup, for instance.
Later that evening, confined by the curfew, I make my way to the hotel bar. “Budweiser, Joe?” says my bartender. I tell him my name’s Michael, and he chuckles at my naiveté. Filipinos call random Americans “Joe,” he explains, a holdover from the days when most Americans in the Philippines were servicemen or “GI Joes.” I ask for “something local,” and he pours a San Miguel beer. He’s curious about what I, a Kano (another slang for “American”), think of his hometown.
“It’s been a busy two days,” I say, “I’ve seen earthquakes, typhoons and …”
“And a mutiny!” he says, laughing as he pours himself a drink. “That’s Manila! You never know what’s coming. It’s crazy, but it’s never boring.”
“Bahala na.” I shrug.
“Bahala na!” he replies.
Manila is a freewheeling, riotous blur of color, sound and odor, a simultaneous party and hangover where anything goes and often does. As a third-world metropolis of 12 million people—the most densely populated city in the world—it’s afflicted with the usual problems of overcrowding and grit. Still, Filipinos are among the happiest, friendliest, most unassailably cheerful people on Earth. In 2007, a global research firm found that Pinoys rate second only to Asian Indians in optimism and happiness. Suggesting again some truth to the old saw westerners love to repeat but never believe: Money really doesn’t equal happiness.
“Manila’s feral,” Carlos Celdran tells me over semi-cold San Miguels. “It’s the wild west.” Carlos is an actor and performance artist who runs an artists’ co-op near Remedios Circle in the hip (think downscale Greenwich Village) area of Malate. He’s outspoken about all things Filipino; while he’s quick to excoriate Manila’s problems, he’s also clearly—and deeply—in love with his city. “There’s a poetry here,” he says. “If you look under the surface, you’re going to find a city rich in history, with museums, shops, cafés. Manila’s always been gritty; the cacophony, the dirt—it’s part of the character. Once you can hear through the cacophony, you’re going to hear the poetry. If you can’t find beauty in Manila, you can’t find it anywhere.”
Carlos invites me to join his popular walking tour through what he calls the soul of Manila, Intramuros (literally “within the walls”). Built at the mouth of the Pasig River in the sixteenth century, Intramuros is the walled city from which Spain exerted control over its farthest-flung colony. We begin at Fort Santiago, the garrison that protected the Spanish colonists from the huddled masses beyond the walls. The Philippines’ Spanish discoverer, Miguel López de Legazpi, apparently put a good deal of thought into choosing the fort’s namesake, Santiago Matamoros (literally, Saint James, Killer of Muslims). Fort Santiago was the stronghold from which the Spanish established dominion over the Muslims who’d been trading (and proselytizing) in the Philippines centuries before the Spanish arrived in 1565. Today, Intramuros is one of only two places left in Manila where one can experience the ambiance of the Spanish colonial period.
Americans might remember Intramuros for the role it played in the Second World War; the Japanese occupied and later mined the area. Douglas MacArthur, returning as promised, opted not to risk ground troops in the booby-trapped maze of the old city. Instead, the Americans bombed Manila more or less indiscriminately; while they succeeded in dislodging the 3,000 or so Japanese soldiers, more than 100,000 Filipinos died in the crossfire. (Grim Filipino humor: MacArthur returned, but we wish he hadn’t). When the dust settled, whatever remained of Intramuros, the buildings the Japanese hadn’t destroyed, was gone. Except for the baroque San Agustin Church, miraculously the only building left standing, everything a visitor sees in Intramuros today is a reconstruction.
It’s a deeply felt narrative in Manila, one of the defining stories of its culture. Before the war, Manila enjoyed a reputation as Southeast Asia’s most modern, cosmopolitan city. But in four short weeks, from Feb. 3 to March 3, 1945, it was reduced from the Pearl of the Orient to the second most devastated allied city of the war (Warsaw took first prize). While it has been rebuilt, it has never recovered its prewar character. Today, wandering among the ochre-colored walls and tranquil lily ponds of Fort Santiago, redolent with approximated old-world charm, that history seems a near-distant echo, a voluble ghost.
On the evening of my visit, though, a holier kind of ghost drifted through Intramuros. Once a year, churches from throughout the country transport their hallowed images of the Virgin Mary to Manila and parade them through the streets. This was to be a banner year, with more than seventy figures scheduled to participate. During the day, Intramuros had been abuzz with people dressing the figures in elaborate gold-embroidered robes and festooning their carrozas, or carriages, with lilies and orchids, with candles and electric lights. As night fell, thousands of devotees—beauty queens in gossamer dresses, little girls with angel wings, steely-eyed men in military uniform—followed the Marys to strains of “Ave Maria” and “Silent Night.” It was part procession, part celebration: The entire population of one town accompanied its Mary, singing and dancing behind her carroza. Darkness gathered, and all the long suffering recorded in the streets of Intramuros, all the stains and grit of today’s Manila faded into the blue. The Marys floated past, their angelic faces illuminated by lamps at once electric and divine. Their wooden eyes, cast earthward in compassion or raised heavenward in rapture, delivered a message in symbol. None of that matters, they seemed to say. Trust in God. Bahala na.
“Manileños come to Binondo for only two reasons,” says Ivan Man Dy. “To eat and to shop.” I have come to eat. Binondo is Manila’s Chinatown, possibly the world’s first and oldest. Unlike most other Chinatowns, or perhaps any other Chinatown, it’s centered on a massive Catholic church. I meet Ivan in front its stained, 411-year-old façade, the only part of the original church to survive the bombing. The unusual design of its bell tower exemplifies the East-meets-West fusion that characterizes not only Chinatown but Manila as a whole: It’s an eight-sided pagoda.
The Chinese arrived in Manila close on the heels of the Spanish in the sixteenth century, supplying the labor and the commercial muscle for Spain’s developing colony. Because there were few Chinese women, they intermarried with the indigenous Malay Tagalog people. Because they were considered heathens and thus prevented from integrating into Spanish Catholic society, the ever-pragmatic Chinese converted to Christianity and took Hispanic names. Binondo became the locus of this utterly unique Malay/Chinese/ Spanish/Christian (and later American) “chop suey” culture, as Ivan calls it. As a result, one finds curious syntheses, such as a sidewalk shrine with a crucifix flanked by sticks of burning incense, a brace of Chinese stone lions guarding the entry to a church, or street vendors hawking Buddhist good luck charms bearing images of the Virgin Mary rather than Kwan Yin.
Like the Chinatown of my native New York, Binondo is where you go for some of the best cheap eats in town. Ivan, a self-styled “streetwalker” (though he wasn’t aware of the double-entendre, he says, when he printed the word on his lapel button), leads an eating tour through the warren of Binondo’s narrow streets. At open-air stalls and in hole-in-the-wall eateries, we sample dim sum, siopao (the meat-filled bun known to Hawai‘i as manapua), a peasant rice soup from Fujian. At one stall, Ivan passes out eggs dyed a radioactively bright magenta. I fear that a long-dreaded moment has arrived: I’m to be peer-shamed into sampling balut, an infamous Filipino delicacy—pickled duck embryo, avec bones, feet, beak, feathers. A food so challenging (okay, I’ll say it: disgusting) that contestants on Fear Factor were forced to choke it down for money. Some couldn’t. Just as I feel a sudden bout of vegetarianism coming on, I discover that it’s a harmless tea egg—a hard-boiled chicken egg stewed in a broth of salty tea, a street food popular throughout China. Odd at first, but tasty.
We turn off the street at an unmarked doorway and walk down a long, dark hall. At the end, a surprise: an open-air courtyard done in art deco style, painted a hotter pink than the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Here, amid the garish influence of 1930s America, in the heart of a Catholic Chinatown with a Spanish cathedral, we eat lumpia—a traditional Filipino deep-fried meat and vegetable roll. “Everything is a mixture here,” Ivan says with what appears to be a little pride. “We look Malay, eat Chinese food, pray to Spanish saints and imitate Frank Sinatra so perfectly you’d think he’s still alive.”
Walking tours are an excellent introduction for a tourist and may get you safely through places like Binondo where tourists don’t usually venture alone. But one measure of a great city is, for me, what happens when you get lost in it. I pointed to an area that on my map was labeled simply “textile market.” The cabbie hesitated; he spoke little English, but his expression was easy to translate: You sure, Joe?
I got in the cab. I was sure. I was ready.
I wasn’t ready. As we neared the market area, the crowds swelled, traffic clogged the streets. An armada of dilapidated tricycles called “poor man’s taxis” and overstuffed Jeepneys (garishly decorated Jeep minivans that serve as public transportation) inched ever deeper toward some heart of shopping darkness. I stepped out of the cab and into the ongoing convulsion of hot and sticky commerce that is Baclaran market on Bonifacio Day, a national holiday many Filipinos spend shopping for Christmas.
Baclaran is one of three major street markets in metro Manila. The most unusual is the profusion of stalls congregated around Quiapo Church, where vendors sell a variety of religious icons and paraphernalia, some Christian—cherubic baby Jesus dolls and Virgin Mary statues—and some, well, not so Christian, like what the locals call “voodoo cures”: herbs and potions that claim to be everything from vegetable Viagra to abortion-inducers (and this on the doorstep of one of the city’s main Catholic churches). Then there’s the mother of all street markets, a place where even Manileños fear to tread, but for a bargain, they will: Divisoria, an utterly bewildering labyrinth where you can buy bulk items fresh off the boat from China, mostly. Christmas decorations, clothing, hectares of plastic gimcracks, mountains of pork rinds, which are to Filipinos what potato chips are to Americans. If you want something cheaper than what you’d pay at Divisoria, you’ll have to inherit it, steal it or make it yourself.
Baclaran is by comparison a little tamer but still respectably rambunctious, a good place for getting lost. As the only tourist I see—which I take as a promising sign—I draw steady attention, though all of it friendly. Almost everything here is packed in bale form: bales of rubber flip-flops, bales of ornamental fans, bales of women’s underwear stacked a storey high. “Hey Joe!” calls out a guy waving a white tank top he’s pulled from a bale, “You can be like Die Hard! Cheap!” Untempted, I move off the main drag and into the tight side streets, where everyone is pressed together in a sweaty human river. Passing what must be the food court, where feral cats stalk the underworld beneath stalls selling Asian vegetables, balut and chestnuts roasting in repurposed oil drums (it is Christmas, after all), I hear a cry of “Tahooooo!” I stop to buy a cup of taho, warm, soft tofu mixed with carmelized sugar, a delicious—and safe—treat so far as street food goes. So I tell myself.
For Ivan and Carlos, as for many Filipinos I’ve met, the ragged charm of old Manila and the combustible street markets like Baclaran are a counterweight to the antiseptic mall culture now sweeping Manila. While the malls offer air-conditioned respite from the hellacious Philippine heat and relief from the noise and grit, they’re homogenizing a city still in search of its own identity. There’s a concern that Manila may be Starbucked and Banana Republicked—First Worlded, if you will—to death before something authentically Filipino has a chance to develop after four centuries of colonialism. “The soul of Manila isn’t in the malls,” Ivan had said. “It’s in Intramuros, Quiapo, Binondo, the street markets.”
As frenzied as a market like Baclaran is—with the chaos, the noise, the brine of exhaust in the air—there’s a reassuring orderliness to it. As if by social contract, the shoppers jostle but never push, and everyone manages to keep out of everyone else’s way, even smiling with strangers. I shudder to picture what 5,000 New Yorkers jammed together in near-equatorial heat like this might do to each other. But these, you’ll remember, are the second-happiest people on Earth. A woman with a bundle on her head bumps me as we’re borne on the irresistible human current. She labors under her burden, and I’m hopelessly lost, but we exchange a laugh at our plight that reaches across our separate worlds.
She asks where I’m from; her perfect English surprises me.
“America.”
“Oh, America!” she says with an unabashed admiration that’s becoming rare in the world these days. “I have family in Detroit!” She points to the bundle on her head. “This is for them.” We talk about our families, our jobs. She works in a call center doing customer service for an American company, a growing industry in the Philippines. This is the first year she’s been able to send gifts to her relatives abroad, and though she hates working nights, she says it’s worth it for the salary: $300 a month. “I’m rich!” she jokes.
The frenetic day closes with a blazing sunset that turns the city briefly to gold, and Manila gears up for another episode of its legendary nightlife. After dark, Manila is transformed from shabby leviathan to a massive carnival ride; as deep as their devotion to heavenly pursuits may be, the Manileños’ commitment to an earthly party runs just as deep.
Maybe it’s ironic that the rebels chose Makati City as ground zero for their abortive coup. They were hoping for a resurgence of the nonviolent “people power” movement of 1986, when masses of Manila’s frustrated and dispossessed swept Ferdinand Marcos from power. But Makati is the last place you’ll find Manila’s frustrated and dispossessed. Here among its gritless avenues, tony malls and trendy restaurants, upwardly mobile Filipinos, expats and tourists come to play. The elegant Greenbelt Mall (“the country’s first premier lifestyle center,” according to its PR) is home to high-end shops like Prada and Armani, and the Apple Store (I can’t resist an Apple Store) is not only better stocked than those in Honolulu; it’s more expensive. For many, Makati represents the model of what Manila might one day become: The Pearl of the Orient redux.
At the outdoor tables by Havana Café, young Filipinas in knee-high boots and miniskirts vie for the attentions of Kanos downing an alarming number of San Miguels, and Chinese businessmen take leisurely, reptilian pulls on Cuban cigars. The Starbucks and the Seattle’s Best (within twenty feet of one another) are full with decked-out tourists dosing up on fuel for their nocturnal missions. Most are headed to the clubs for drinking and dancing, others to the hostess bars along P. Burgos Street, but I want to scope out something a bit more under the radar, a little live music joint called Saguijo on the not-so-mean back streets of Makati.
In official terms, Saguijo qualifies as a dive. But it’s a popular venue for many of the city’s up-and-coming bands that are rarely if ever heard beyond the shores of the Philippines, but which nevertheless thoroughly rock. Even though most of the music derives from American alt-rock and grunge (much of it sung in Tagalog), it hasn’t yet become a victim of its own
success, prefabricated, overproduced and mass marketed. It was, to revive a tired cliché, really about the music. Impressed by the unpretentious musicianship, I close the place down. A first for me in years.
Back near my hotel in Malate at 3 a.m., the streets are still filled with revelers going in and out of the bars by Remedios Circle or trying their luck at the Casino Filipino. My plane leaves in a few hours, though, so I decide to pack it in. But the throb and noise of a city seeking temporary salvation keeps me up, and I head back out. Passing a hopping bar bright with neon at about 4 a.m., I hear strains of Sinatra. But it’s not a stereo system; it’s a videoke (i.e., video karaoke) parlor where an improbably short Filipino man in gingham pants and a fedora belts out a heartfelt and pitch-perfect finale to “My Way.”
On the way to the airport, my cabbie asks what I’m doing in Manila. “I’m writing a story about the city,” I say, “for a magazine.”
I see his eyes widen in the rearview mirror. “Oh,” he says. “Well, I hope you’re going to write about the good things.”
That reaction says a lot about this city and the people I’ve met here. In that simple statement is the knowledge that things aren’t quite what they could be. But they see past that; they see what may yet be. They know that their pearl is unique in the world. That their restless metropolis perched on the shores of a shivering island is a continuous act of becoming, an article of faith. HH
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