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Bangsamoro Substate Needs Constitutional Amendment

Press Statements

  

  • BANGSAMORO SUBSTATE NEEDS
  • CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

 

          If the Bangsamoro substate will supplant the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and install a federal state in the Muslim areas of Southern Philippines as reportedly claimed by MILF Vice Chairman for Political Affairs Jaafar Ghanzali, then the Constitution has to be amended to effectuate these proposals.

 

           The requisite constitutional amendment would have to be proposed by a constituent assembly, constitutional convention or people’s initiative, and subject to ratification in a nationwide plebiscite because basic principles and provisions of the Constitution of 1987 would have to be altered or repealed.

 

           The Constitution established a unitary form of government consistent with our political tradition, experience and jurisprudence and as similarly established in the 1935 and 1973 Constitutions.

 

           The Constitution likewise mandates the creation of an autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao, and pursuant to this mandate the Congress has enacted R.A. 6734 (Organic Act of 1989) organizing the ARMM, which was amended by Republic Act No. 9054 (Expanded Organic Act of 2001), both of which were duly ratified in plebiscites.

 

           Negotiations between the government and the MILF could be fast-tracked, but any settlement that would entail the amendment of the Constitution would have to go through the amendatory process in order to be constitutional and valid.