Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Benjamin Abalos Jr. on Saturday said secession is not the solution to Mindanao’s problems, adding that it would violate the basic principles of the Philippine Constitution.
Abalos made the statement in reaction to former President Rodrigo Duterte’s call for Mindanao to secede from the rest of the country.
“To ensure continued peace, progress, and development in Mindanao, the Philippines must remain united and undivided,” Abalos said.
He added the move would destroy the territorial integrity of the Philippines, and disrupt decades of painstaking effort to build a stronger union among all our peoples and ethnicities.
“The people’s right to self-determination should be exercised within the framework of the state. Self-determination means that the people pursue political, economic, social, and cultural development while respecting the state’s territorial integrity and legal process,” Abalos said.
Abalos said the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) is a powerful example of addressing historical grievances and providing self-governance within the bounds of Philippine law.
Presidential peace adviser Carlito Galvez earlier urged the public to turn away from any action that would destabilize the country, including the former president.
Political science professor Dennis Coronacion, in a radio interview, said talks of a campaign for Mindanao to secede from the Philippines is a “flex” by the former president and his political allies.
Coronacion added that and any actual move to split the Philippines’ second-largest island from the republic “will likely not prosper.”
“They’re really trying to prove that they control these areas. ‘We have areas under our control and if you cannot satisfy our needs, our wants, we are going our own way,” he said.
“To think that Mindanao is still recovering from conflict.”
The administration UniTeam coalitions swept the 2022 elections but issues on confidential funds for the Office of the Vice President and Department of Education, budget allocations for Davao City, and disagreement over moves to amend the 1987 Constitution have led to tension between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and the Dutertes.
He said that tension within the administration UniTeam coalition could see part of it become an opposition slate in the 2025 elections, when voters will elect local officials, district representatives and senators.
‘MINDANAWONS UNLIKELY TO SUPPORT CALL’
Coronacion said that the talk of secession shows “how far
[politicians] are willing to go just to serve their interest.”
Unequal development outside the capital has led to resentment, especially in the Visayas and Mindanao against “Imperial Manila”, a sentiment that helped bring Duterte — the first Mindanawon president —
to Malacañang in 2016.
Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez, a former House speaker and whom Duterte has tasked with gathering signatures for the campaign, said Mindanao should be “set free” and be allowed to chart its own future independent of Manila.
“Ako lang, dito sa distrito ko, ang laki po ng tinanggal na mga infrastructure projects… It seems na wala na talagang pag-asa para maayos itong aming lugar dito sa Mindanao,” Alvarez said earlier this week.
Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers said the proposal is worth studying, adding Mindanawons “have all the reason and the motive to do this” because, he said, of neglect by the national government.
But Coronacion said Saturday that the campaign is unlikely to succeed because the national government has been addressing the needs of Mindanao.
“Di kagaya noon na somehow medyo nag-gain pa ng traction iyan, noong 1960s, 1970s,” he said.
(It isn’t like before that somehow, these ideas gained traction in the 1960s and 1970s.)
He said: “I don’t think that the people in Mindanao would support the call of the former President to secede from the rest of the Philippines.”
Without naming Duterte, Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez Jr. — who, when he was a military commander, had been assigned to what is now the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao — has warned the public against supporting the campaign.
“Let us turn away from any call or movement that aims to destabilize our beloved nation, especially to separate Mindanao from the rest of the country,” he said on Friday. — Jonathan de Santos, ABS-CBN News