Moro Advocate to Puno: You Have Blood in Your Hands

AN OPEN LETTER TO CHIEF JUSTICE REYNALDO PUNO

January 13, 2009

Reynato Puno
Chief Justice
Supreme Court of the Philippines

Dear Chief Justice Puno:

Assalamu Alaikum Warrahmatulahi Wabarakatu! Greetings of peace to you and your family this new year!

First of all, we sincerely hope that you will bother to read this letter. We had our first experience on how is it to be in the Supreme Court a few months back during the Oral Argument on the MOA-AD and I felt that the Bangsamoro people had not been adequately heard. I don’t want to cry over spilled milk but I just want to register for record purposes that not a single Moro soul has even been allowed to speak on the Ancestal Domain during all the three session days of your Oral Arguments. Where is fair play?

I was watching the evening news yesterday and I was overwhelmed with amusement when I heard the story about the plan to impeach you. Amused because I cannot simply believe how fast karma can at times get back on some people. How I wish it arrived earlier in the doorsteps of Malacanang than in the Supreme Court but God has a way of playing jokes. My amusement lies not on the possibility that you will be impeached – but on the fact that the same people who butchered the MOA-AD are the very ones now out to oust you. After getting what they wanted on the MOA-AD in your Court – now they want your head.

The truth Mr. Chief Justice is that you have blood in your hands. You have enjoined the signing of a peace agreement that could have resolved the raging armed conflict in Mindanao . In the presence of hundreds of diplomats, donors, government officials, journalists, peace advocates who came to Marriot Hotel in Kuala Lumpur to witness the historic signing of the most contentious agenda in the peace talks, you had so boldly issued your TRO.

In favor of whom? Vice Governor Pinol? If you don’t know yet, Pinol will prevent anything that will return the lands that he had grabbed from the lumads and Bangsamoro people in Cotabato. If you so very well studied Ancestral Domain – you cannot simply miss to ask how is it that an Ilonggo like Pinol is now the one ruling over the plains of Cotabato? How did Pinol turn this once proud Cotabato empire into Pinol country? Pinol from where? By native title alone, Cotabato belongs to the Bangsamoro people and we simply could not understand why people begrudge the Moros from claiming what is rightly ours.

Mayor Lobregat? Where did the Lobregats come from? How may thousands of hectares did the Lobregat grab from the Maranaos in Balabagan, Lanao del Sur? How can your scale of justice cannot fathom the injustices here in Mindanao ? Aside from crying foul that the Cathedral and his own residence are included in the BJE which is a total lie – he could have also complained that his frequently visited gay bars in Zamboanga are included too. But that is already below the belt. I will no longer dwell into that. Besides, I have such high respect for gay people.

As I have read in my law books Mr. Chief Justice, the Supreme Court is not only a court of law but a court of justice. How do you address the historical injustice committed against the Bangsamoro people when you have that great wall of constitutionality blocking viable formula for peace? Of course it cannot pass the test of constitutionality because the legal system is so designed to maintain the status quo, to favor the Christian settlers, to protect the interests of the ruling elite.