Palace: No signing of MOA in present form
By Michael Lim Ubac, Leila Salaverria
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:27:00 08/22/2008
MANILA, Philippines—Malacañang announced Thursday night that it would not sign a memorandum of agreement (MOA) on an expanded Bangsamoro homeland in its present form.
Press Secretary Jesus Dureza said that the Arroyo administration was reviewing the MOA on ancestral domain in the light of statements made by several justices during a hearing last week opposing the deal and the outbreak of violence in Mindanao.
“They committed terrorist activities there,” Dureza said, referring to attacks mounted by guerrillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in at least five provinces in Central Mindanao that had left scores of civilians dead, including women and children.
“The position of Malacañang is very clear. We will not yet sign that, whatever the ruling of the Supreme Court will be,” Dureza said. “We will await the ruling of the Supreme Court, but the decision had been arrived at, we will not sign the MOA in its present form.”
Asked if the government had informed Malaysia and the powerful Organization of the Islamic Conference, which brokered the accord, Dureza said that Presidential Peace Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. had been tasked to do this.
Court spokesperson Jose Midas Marquez told reporters earlier Thursday that the high tribunal would resume its hearing on Friday on petitions to strike down the MOA unless the Arroyo administration made a categorical statement that the deal was off.
Marquez said that Tuesday’s motion by Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera asking the tribunal to dismiss petitions against the MOA because “circumstances had changed” and the administration would renegotiate it anyway was not convincing enough.
Formal manifestation
“I think there has to be a formal manifestation of the intention to the court ... If you read the motion, there’s really no categorical statement there. The solicitor general would have to convince the court that’s really the intention of government, that the MOA in its present form will no longer be signed,” Marquez told reporters.
He said that the court would also have to consider the views of the petitioners—Mindanao local officials who said they were not consulted in the inclusion of areas under their jurisdiction in the expanded Moro homeland.
Malacañang earlier said the MOA would end four decades of fighting that had claimed 120,000 lives and displaced 2 million in Mindanao. But the petitioners said the MOA amounted to a dismemberment of the Philippine republic and the creation of a new state.
The Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the signing in Malaysia on Aug. 5 of the MOA pending a hearing on the petitions.
The MILF had earlier said that the MOA had become a “done deal” after it was initialed in July in Malaysia during secret negotiations and whatever ruling the court comes out with was not binding on the group.
MILF leaders have blamed the attacks in Mindanao in the past two weeks on field commanders impatient at the delay in the implementation of what had been described by both sides as a preliminary accord.
‘Patently illegal’
During the initial court hearing last week, several justices said that the document was “patently illegal” and that some of its provisions violated the Constitution.
Last week, Malacañang revived talk of amending the Constitution after the Supreme Court in 2006 dismissed as a “grand deception” a similar move. Critics said that the MOA was a “Trojan horse” designed to change the Charter and prolong Ms Arroyo’s stay in power beyond 2010, the mandatory expiration of her term.
Former Sen. Franklin Drilon, Sen. Manuel Roxas II and United Opposition spokesperson Adel Tamano Thursday filed a joint opposition to Devanadera’s plea, asking the court to proceed with Friday’s hearing and issue a ruling striking down the preliminary agreement.
“A statement from respondents that it will undertake a review of the terms of the MOA or will renegotiate its terms is not tantamount to a commitment that they will not sign the same,” they said in a statement.
Possibility of revival
“The results of the intended review or renegotiation of the MOA include among its distinct possibilities a decision to adopt the exact or equivalent MOA in contention, thus leaving very much alive, ripe and intact for adjudication the claims and prayers of the petitions,” the three said in their joint opposition.
Drilon, Roxas and Tamano said in a statement that Dureza’s pronouncement that the MOA would not be signed had been contradicted by Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, pointing out that Ermita appeared to be saying that the deal was not flawed and that Malacañang would just have to wait for the court ruling before deciding what to do.
“Without such a categorical declaration made in writing, under oath to this Honorable Court, the distinct possibility of the signing of the same MOA or the negotiation or execution of an agreement with similar terms to the MOA will be ever present,” the three said.
They also contested what they said was the government’s posturing that blamed the high court’s TRO on the MOA signing for the violence that has erupted in Mindanao provinces.
Blame peace panel
The three petitioners said what started the ball rolling was the government peace panel’s “unlawful act ... in encouraging the MILF forces to claim by force what it considers as its moral and legal right to claim—the Bangsamoro territory.”
According to them, it was “extremely disrespectful” for the government to blame the deaths on a lawful action, when it was its “reckless and wildly irresponsible acts of negotiating and initialing a MOA that they cannot defend in any court of law.”
The petitioners also want the high court to decide the case on its merits so that any abuse of discretion or unconstitutional actions by the government peace panel would be known.
They said that Malacañang’s move to render moot the petition should not stop the tribunal from ruling on the constitutional issues.
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