MNLF proposes 3 options for Bangsamoro independence

MNLF chairman Datu Abul Khayr Alonto. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

While backing the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) is proposing three more options in which the Bangsamoro can achieve independence “in a purely peaceful, non-violent, and democratic process without resorting to war.”

MNLF chairman Datu Abul Khayr Alonto presented the three options during the hearing of the Senate committee on local government together with the committees on peace, unification, and reconciliation, and constitutional amendments.

The first option, Alonto said, is for Congress to craft a law adopting the “Malaysia-Singapura” formula that he said would “finally and grudgingly separate the Bangsamoro from the Philippines.”

“Perhaps, like Malaysia and Singapore, we can both rise up to becoming leaders of the Asean,” he said.

The second option, he said, is to call on the “full engagement of the United States of America to right the wrong they have committed and correct the infamy they made in including our territories in their grant of independence to the Philippines.”

“And if that too is not still possible, then the third option is to take the final and newest option available to the Bangsamoro: “remedial secession” … the restoration of our freedom, sovereignty and independence as a people following the peaceful example of the people of Kosovo,” Alonto said.

“All options above stated are through completely peaceful, non-violent, and democratic processes. There is no need for the Philippine government to wage war on the Bangsamoro from hereon. To do so would simply be an act of barbarism on the peoples of Mindanao; and if you dare wage war again after this, then as in 494 years, the Bangsamoro will remain standing on its shores and its ancestors Lapu-Lapu and Sultan Kudarat, et al, did, to defend Islam and its homeland at all times,” he added.

Before this, Alonto reiterated the MNLF support for the BBL based on Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro or CAB, which he said obliged the Philippine government to negotiate with the good Muslim leadership of Southern Philippines, including their group.

The MNLF expressed dismay on the results of the latest executive sessions of the ad hoc committee in the House of Representatives on the BBL.

“Dismayed frustration is the least of the emotions we felt. If this ‘end product’ were to go through, then this Philippine Congress is merely perpetuating the 494 Colonial Policy of the Philippine government towards the first nation of this country, your brethren, the Bangsamoro people,” he said.

Alonto earlier said MILF chairman Murad Ebrahim has intimated to him that the harmonized version of the BBL merely contained 20 percent of the CAB.

“Which means that the BBL being deliberated upon in the two houses of the Philippine Congress is already 80 percent diluted, over the years of negotiation between the GPH and the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front),” he said.

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