Chairperson of the government peace panel, Professor Miriam
Coronel-Ferrer, on Monday (March 30) clarified that members of the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF) will not be integrated into the Philippine National
Police or the Armed Forces of the Philippines, once the draft Bangsamoro Basic
Law (BBL) is passed.
“Again, we would like to clarify, wala pong integration ng MILF sa
police force or sa Armed Forces of the Philippines, unlike in the peace
agreement with the MNLF, that is not there; and the MILF will not become the
police force for the Bangsamoro,” she said.
Professor Ferrer urged the people to “go back to the text” to
correct wrong interpretations on the contents of the BBL.
“What we are stressing is go back to the text, go back to the
original source, kasi ‘pag ang lumalabas ay ang mga parang general perceptions,
then you miss out all of these very, very important provisions in the draft law
that basically repeats what is written in the Constitution or upholds what are
written in the Constitution and effectively delimits the powers of the
Bangsamoro government,” she pointed out.
On the supposed creation of a Commission on Audit under the Bangsamoro
government, she cited that according to Article 5, Section 2 of the BBL, the
body that will be created in terms of performing some auditing functions in the
Bangsamoro shall not in any way prejudice the powers, authority and duty of the
national COA.
“What probably has created a lot of confusion is to call that body
a Bangsamoro Commission on Audit. So if the idea is to allow for an internal
audit system that is within the Bangsamoro government, perhaps, one of the
revisions or cleaning up that could be done is to remove any reference to that
particular name, which has created much of this confusion,” she explained.
Ferrer also denied that the Bangsamoro government will have its
own Commission on Election, noting that the BBL’s Article 7, Section 9 refers
to a Bangsamoro electoral office, which shall be part of the COMELEC.
“The only specialization that this COMELEC office in the
Bangsamoro will have, is in relation to the fact that it will have a different
kind of an electoral system,” she said.
On the Commission on Human Rights, Ferrer said the Autonomous
Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) already has such a commission.
“So what is provided for here is that the Commission on Human
Rights in the Bangsamoro shall have a coordinative and complementary
relationship with the national Commission on Human Rights in carrying out its
mandate, which is exactly what we have now in the ARMM, and that has been
facilitated by a memorandum of agreement between the national Commission on
Human Rights and the newly created the two- or three-year-old ARMM Commission
on Human Rights,” she said.
“Maybe what is a little bit controversial here is that in the
proposed law, there is this provision that provides for prosecutorial powers
for the Bangsamoro Commission on Human Rights, which the current National
Commission on Human Rights does not have,” she added.
Amid the confusion, Ferrer said she hopes that Congress would be
able to provide a better version of the BBL.
“We are not saying that the way the law is drafted now is the best
language already that there is, and we look up to the wisdom of Congress to be
able to come up with a much better language, precisely to be able to avoid
these kinds of misinterpretation,” Ferrer said. (PCOO News Release)
