Nur Misuari and the Politics of Betrayal

By CARLOS H. CONDE

Even his eyes betrayed him. They looked weary, as though they had not had a wink for days. If you looked into them, you would get the sense that this man had gone through hell. Betrayed is probably the right word, and that is exactly what Nur Misuari has been feeling nowadays.

On this night inside his office in Zamboanga City (his first night outside Jolo, where he spent three weeks in self-imposed seclusion days before the August 14 plebiscite in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao or ARMM), Misuari sat in a gray leather sofa, wearing a light-blue polo shirt and cream slacks and a pair of slippers that couldn’t hide his longish toenails. He looked pale and the huge picture frame of Mecca behind him – in which tens of thousands of Muslims from all over the world are praying to Allah – did little to brighten his aura.

“I cannot understand how Misuari can become a threat,” he says by way of explaining the unusual troop movement in Jolo when he was there. “I told them (Malacañang officials) that if I wanted war, why did I ever agree to sign the peace agreement to end the war? Why? There is no logic to that! But it is they who I believe are so anxious to make war on us, thinking perhaps that the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) is already a spent force, that Misuari cannot command any more respect.”

And so it is that the man who brought to the fore the legitimacy of the Moro struggle, the man who swore before his father’s grave that he would take up arms for his people’s liberation, is still fighting for the one thing that has eluded the Moros for decades – respect.

August 14, the day of the plebiscite that sought the expansion of the ARMM, is considered by Misuari as his own Day of Infamy. That plebiscite represented to Misuari what to him is his worst betrayal by the government. The Arroyo administration had proceeded with the plebiscite despite his pleadings, despite his arguments that the plebiscite was a violation of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement that he signed with then president Fidel Ramos.

Misuari had argued that the law that amended the original Organic Act creating the ARMM was not only faulty, it was also unilateral in that the MNLF which Misuari heads was not a party to its crafting. Misuari and the MNLF had campaigned for a boycott of the plebiscite. They said that approving the law would be an injustice to the Moros. By forcing the issue, Misuari says, the government effectively abrogated the 1996 peace agreement. The result of the plebiscite was disastrous, to say the least.

As Misuari had feared, the opposition to the ARMM’s expansion was massive; only two areas out of the 14 cities and 15 provinces that are supposed to be eligible for inclusion in the ARMM voted yes. Any more impressive than that would have been unthinkable, simply because the ARMM, one of the poorest regions in the country, is hardly a showcase of promise, let alone prosperity.

The national government has been blaming Misuari for that, arguing that due to his incompetence, Misuari had squandered the opportunity to make autonomy work. To some degree, this is true. Even Misuari’s sympathizers – like Fr. Eliseo Mercado Jr., a leading Mindanao peace advocate – concede that he is an inefficient manager. That was obvious when he was chosen governor of the ARMM: it took him more than two months to fill up the cabinet positions. It was also clear, thanks to his frequent absence in the ARMM, that he was preoccupied with things other than running the region. In fact, in his first year as ARMM governor and chairman of the Southern Philippines Council for Peace and Development (SPCPD), some of his colleagues in the MNLF Central Committee were already complaining about his frequent trips outside his region.

Misuari would counter that, on the contrary, it is the government which has not kept its end of the bargain. Records would tend to favor Misuari. For example, the budget for the ARMM’s development projects and programs has dwindled in the past years; from a high of P1.5 billion in 1998 (out of the ARMM’s total P4.9 billion budget for that year), the funds for projects dropped to P545 million the next year, then to a measly P50 million for 2002. (Between 80 percent to 85 percent of ARMM’s budget has always been allotted – even before Misuari’s time – to the salaries of the region’s close to 20,000 employees.)

Besides, Misuari simply didn’t stand a chance in making autonomy work. Aside from the fact that the autonomous region is largely dependent on the whims of the national government as far as budget is concerned, the SPCPD is seriously flawed. Under the executive order that created it, the SPCPD is simply mandated to monitor and suggest projects and programs (which are undertaken by national line agencies), not implement these. In a political experiment that has a direct impact on the lives of Moros and on how non-Moros regard them, that meant a whole world of difference. And because the public and the media have been conditioned to accept that growth and prosperity in Mindanao is the SPCPD’s main task, blame for its failure would land on the lap of its chairman. The situation was so flawed some MNLF officials thought it was a setup.

To make matters worse, most investments and development projects in Mindanao were poured into relatively well-off areas such as the Davao provinces, General Santos City, Sarangani province and Zamboanga – areas which leaders tasked by Malacañang to promote Mindanao, such as former presidential assistant for Mindanao Paul Dominguez, reportedly have considerable vested interests in. Indeed, the ARMM areas hardly figured in the much-vaunted BIMP-Eaga, which Dominguez zealously pushed during Ramos’ time.

As a result, Misuari had little to show, if at all, to convince people of the viability of autonomy because either he didn’t have the money to do it or whatever projects implemented during his term were not credited to him, let alone to autonomy. Thus, as far as Misuari, some Moros and even Mindanao peace advocates are concerned, the ARMM was doomed to fail from the very start. Misuari, Fr. Mercado says, “was put in a straitjacket.”

Either way, Misuari’s critics are convinced that he just couldn’t hack it as a politician. They are so convinced, in fact, that hardly any blame is being heaped on Malacañang, which has direct control and supervision over the SPCPD. As Fr. Mercado puts it, “the SPCPD is directly attached to the Office of the President. They cannot simply wash their hands.”

But blaming Misuari became de rigueur. A top MNLF official told Asiaweek in 1999 that if Misuari “continues to stay in Manila, that’s the end of him. He is isolating himself from the people. People need him. His presence is better than money. Leadership is better than money.” Parouk Hussin, another leader of the so-called Council of 15 that went against Misuari, told the same magazine: “If you are a leader of a revolutionary organization and if you are betraying the trust of the general population, then you are plotting your own ouster.”