Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — The substitute bill for the Bangsamoro Basic Law is “not just inclusive but beneficial and fair to all — Moros and non-Moros alike.”
In a statement issued on Sunday (August 15), Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he stressed this point in his speech on Saturday (August 15) at the Limketkai Luxe Hotel in Cagayan de Oro City.
He was among the guest speakers at the Mindanao Vice Governors’ Conference, which was led by Misamis Oriental Vice Gov. Jose Mari Pelaez, the vice president for Mindanao of the Vice Governors League of the Philippines.
Marcos, chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Government, said he did “the right thing to do” by drafting the substitute bill that would create a Bangsamoro region to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Equal treatment of LGUs
In a media briefing, a reporter pointed out a criticism that his version — Senate Bill No. 2849 — cut down the powers of the Bangsamoro government.
In reply, Marcos said: “I believe we tried very hard to be fair to everyone concerned.”
He pointed out that many of the provisions of the bill would give equal treatment of the Bangsamoro government and other local government units.
Doing so, he said, would draw the Bangsamoro closer to mainstream Filipino society.
This principle, he added, guided provisions on the authority of the Bangsamoro government over Lake Lanao, which some critics in social media have tagged as “anti-Moro.”
Municipal waters
“What is different in our substitute bill is we just considered what was described either as inland waters or Bangsamoro waters to adhere to the definition of municipal waters. I don’t see why we need to change it,” Marcos said.
Under the Local Government Code, he pointed out, municipal waters includes streams, lakes, and tidal waters within the municipality that are not the subject of private ownership and are not within national parks, public forests, timber lands, forest reserves or fishery reserves.
Marcos noted his bill would even extend the boundary for marine waters from 15 kilometers up to 22.224 kilometers (12 nautical miles) from the low-water mark of the coasts that are part of the Bangsamoro geographical area.
But the bill would ensured that the National Power Corp. would retain its supervision of power plants generating electricity from the waters of Lake Lanao, as well as the transmission facilities connected to the national grid.
“Lake Lanao is critical as it supplies 60 percent of all the power in Mindanao,” he said. “We all know that we are in crisis when it comes to power generation in Mindanao.”
Many areas in Mindanao, he said, have frequent rotating brownouts lasting from four to eight hours.
That was among the reason why, during hearings at the Senate, the Mindanao Development Authority insisted Lake Lanao should be excluded from the Bangsamoro territory and should be maintained under the exclusive control of the national government for benefit of the entire Mindanao.
