The Institute of Bangsamoro Studies
A Time for Reckoning for the Bangsamoro People
by: Datu Michael O. MasturaDownload Complete text of this Article as
Introductory Sketch
Can we reverse what is presented the ‘legitimacy deficit of imported states’ as a provider of security on its territory by giving free reins to nationalist renewed legitimate claims? Conventional diplomatic technique proves inept where nonstate actors carry out partly the security function or contest the right of the state to uphold and keep it. How did we get it? To recognize diversity in the USIP Philippine Facilitation Project is to draw a Matrix of diversities, wherein you rediscover that ‘the Moros are still here’ to endure. The spirit of past and current generations is bound to the Moro homeland that was once ‘a partner in covenant’ with the United States of America. In its dealings with the ‘unincorporated territory’ of the Philippine Islands, you will recall that the Moro Question constituted a major factor for Filipino full independence. Why should this Question be of interest today? Because it still puzzles political identity that attracts loyalties in domestic politics and in the articulations of spatiotemporal relations.
I take this liberty to articulate what we, Bangsamoro people, today assert as a temporal depth embedded in territorial continuum between our present societies and our territorial ancestors. There is certainly nothing pre¬modern in the recognition of kinships between current members of the nation and the members of those earlier societies that framed the context of homeland, ancestral domain, and territory as they relate the nation¬a¬forming to history. (Read: addressing a petition to the US Congress in 1924 Moro datus and important persons used formally the term ‘Moro Nation’ brought forward to the 1996 and 2001 Bangasamoro people’s consultative assembly demand for a referendum). This introductory paper sketches certain nonlegal factors that engross our energies as stakeholders in mainland Mindanao and the Island Provinces of Basilan, Tawi¬Tawi, and Sulu to focus on a twenty¬first century solution to the Bangsamoro problem.
The Right of Self-Determination
Impact and Implications on the Mindanao Peace Processby: Mohd. Musib M. Buat
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During the initial resumption of the GRP-MILF Peace Talks in Tripoli, Libya on June 20-22, 2001, after it was stalled as a consequence of the all-out-war launched by former President Joseph E. Estrada in April of 2000, the peace negotiation which was proceeding smoothly suffered a brief snag. This revolved on the use of the phrase “self-determination” in the draft text of the agreement about to be concluded by the Parties which was earlier agreed during the crafting of the text of the agreement but the GRP Peace Panel members, headed by then Assistant Secretary Jesus Dureza, subsequently deleted it from the final text of the draft agreement the phrase in question. The peace talks would have broke up on this particular point on the issue of whether or not the phrase in question should be deleted or retained in the final text of the agreement about to be finalized by the Libyan Secretariat of the peace talks, had it not been for the skilled diplomatic facilitation of the Libyan and Malaysian officials jointly facilitating the peace talks.