The Bangsamoro Cause and its Political and Legal Track: Choosing Between Federalism and Autonomy Within A Unitary Government: The Bangsamoro Cause and its Political and Legal Track: Choosing Between Federalism and Autonomy Within A Unitary Government

The Bangsamoro Cause and its Political and Legal Track: Choosing Between Federalism and Autonomy Within A Unitary Government

Abstract

The main argument of this article centers on federalism and autonomy within a unitary government as two legal and political tracks that may possibly cause the full fruition of the Bangsamoro's fundamental right to self-determination. The article begins with a proposition that the concept of self-determination encapsulates the Bangsamoro cause, which the author asserts as an aggregate of the legitimate aspirations and demands of the Muslims in the southern Philippines. Against this backdrop, the article establishes in general terms why the concepts of federalism and autonomy within a unitary government are suitable to propel the Bangsamoro people toward achieving their full potentials in the exercise of the fundamental right to self- determination. The article concludes that both paradigms can achieve the same goal of realization of the Bangsamoro self-determination within the national Filipino community. However, this goes with the parameter that for autonomy to have potency equivalent with federalism vis-à-vis the realization of the Bangsamoro cause through self-determination, it must be a 'strong autonomy'. This however would require constitutional amendment. Thus, the 'strong autonomy' espoused in this article cannot even be accommodated in the Bangsamoro Basic Law, for the latter cannot go beyond the 1987 Constitution. The article ends with a final note that whatever condition in life the Bangsamoro people seek to achieve depends on themselves whatever legal and political track is adopted to facilitate their fundamental right to self-determination.