By Cito Beltran
More than dying for God and country, more than ridding us of a wicked mass-murderer and terrorist, the Fallen SAF-44 made us all pay more attention to the Bangsamoro Basic Law and question its legality and legitimacy. From indignation and anger, we now find ourselves asking the real questions and talking about possible consequences.
First and foremost, we now question whether the MILF can be trusted to govern a large area of one of our three main islands. How can we trust rebels who have not given up the option of armed struggle and who have stood mute if not in collusion with terrorists and sworn enemies of the state and its people? Now we ask how giving in to the MILF will bring peace with the different tribes, clans and political groupings who all claim to be co-equal with the MILF. Do we give all of them their respective independent Islamic State or Caliphate? Or shall we watch them butcher each other the same way their role model brothers in the Middle East are doing in Iraq, Syria, and Africa?
Rather than resigning ourselves to the will of the P-Noy administration we are now asking what are the non-beauty pageant reasons why the Aquino-2 administration is so fired up to push for the BBL? Is it true that the United States stands to gain access or tenancy somewhere in Davao or other parts of Mindanao to relocate their military bases in Japan, which is why the Japanese government has reportedly been fully supportive of the BBL because they can be rid of the political burden if not the curse of American military bases?
These are just some of the questions we have begun to ask or finally opened our eyes and ears to. Perhaps we should also ask the question on what will be the end result of the BBL? Will it lead to the total “Islamization” of Mindanao or worse will it ultimately lead to a new Philippine flag, one with only two stars left and a crescent moon? We all want peace but those who stand to gain the most in all of this, the MILF, must earn it not from the barrel of a gun or a Jihadist threat. Peace must be earned by shared responsibility and evidence of action. “You are either for us or against us.”
For his part, Senator Allan Peter Cayetano has stepped up and has demonstrated what being a true lawmaker and Gatekeeper is about by exposing the many wrong things in the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law. Given how the BBL gives the MILF 75 billion annually, their own police force and provisions for expansion of territories and a list of potential nightmares, Cayetano is doing well by going to media and educating all Filipinos why the BBL needs to be rewritten.