{"id":6926,"date":"2026-07-12T11:25:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T03:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/?p=6926"},"modified":"2026-07-12T11:25:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T03:25:41","slug":"autonomy-as-detour-an-auto-critique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/autonomy-as-detour-an-auto-critique\/","title":{"rendered":"Autonomy as Detour: An Auto-critique"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noor Mohammad Saada<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The Imagined Bangsamoro. <\/strong>When the Moro secessionist movement erupted in the 1970s, its rallying cry was independence from the Philippine body-politic. The objective was not merely local self-government but the establishment of a sovereign Bangsamoro state. This aspiration was reflected even in the official correspondence of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), whose stationery bore the inscription “Bangsamoro Republik” rather than “Autonomous Region.” This imagined Bangsamoro Republik was to be carved out of Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago, and Palawan, and specified in the 1976 Tripoli Agreement, including provinces of Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga del Norte, North Cotabato, Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat, Lanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Davao del Sur, South Cotabato and Palawan, and such cities as Zamboanga, Davao, General Santos and Cotabato. However, after a series of referendum, the vast Minsupala supra-region that forms the historic Bangsamoro is now reduced to just four provinces and sixty-three barangays carved out of North Cotabato, named as Bangsamoro political entity.<\/span><\/p>\n

What happened? How did a movement founded upon secession and national liberation arrive at the political destination of autonomy? Why did a revolutionary struggle for statehood gradually redefine itself as a struggle for self-governance within the Philippine state?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Realities of War and Conflict.<\/strong> The conventional answers are familiar. Military realities made outright victory difficult and war has lingered for decades, further marginalizing many already marginalized Moros. Unfortunately, the balance of power favored the Philippine state; and international support for secession weakened as many Muslim states are also confronting their own separatist movements and therefore became reluctant to endorse the partition of existing nation-states. While the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) provided a platform for the internationalization of the Moro struggle and recognized a revolutionary movement as the representative of the Bangsamoro people, the OIC\u2019s mediation efforts ultimately encouraged a negotiated political settlement rather than full independence. Successive Philippine governments likewise offered various autonomy arrangements as frameworks for peace. For many years, these proposals were rejected because the movement’s objective remained independence rather than regional self-government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Language of Self-Determination.<\/strong> The prior explanations may not be insufficient. The more difficult question is not why the Philippine state preferred autonomy. That is obvious. The more difficult question is why significant sectors of the Moro liberation movement eventually accepted it. Why did the Moro revolutionaries influence the Moro public to accept autonomy as an acceptable option?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Somewhere along the way, a profound ideological shift occurred, the language of independence gradually giving way to the language of self-determination. The discourse of liberation was reformulated into the discourse of governance. The aspiration for a sovereign Bangsamoro state was transformed into the aspiration for meaningful autonomy within the Philippine Republic.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the concept of the Right to Self-Determination (RSD) increasingly occupied the center of Moro political discourse. RSD became the new overarching concept through which the struggle was explained, justified, and reinterpreted. In this way, independence became only one possible expression of self-determination rather than its necessary outcome. For many supporters, this represented political maturity and realism. For other revolutionaries who opt out or remain on the peripheries of the politics of autonomy, it marked the beginning of ideological retreat. The revolutionary objective remained rhetorically intact while its practical content was steadily reduced. Self-determination became flexible enough to accommodate autonomy, power-sharing, and participation in the status quo.<\/span><\/p>\n

From Secession to Autonomy. <\/strong>This raises an uncomfortable dilemma: was autonomy accepted because it was the most achievable form of self-determination? Or was self-determination reinterpreted precisely to justify the acceptance of autonomy? <\/em>The establishment of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and later the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) represented the institutional culmination of this transition. President Noynoy Aquino in accepting the new Bangsamoro political entity justified that the regional autonomy model initiated by his mother was a failed experiment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether this evolution should be understood as strategic adaptation or ideological dilution remains contested. Supporters argue that the current autonomy has begun to deliver political space, recognition, and a measure of self-rule previously denied to the Bangsamoro people. Critics contend that it redirected the movement away from its original objective and normalized participation within the very state structure that earlier generations of Moro revolutionaries fought, and sought to leave behind. For these critics, neo-colonialism is an apt description of the new reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Performance and Moral Legitimacy. <\/strong>Today, much is expected from this new political experiment. BARMM, with an annual budget that now exceeds one hundred billion pesos, is no longer judged merely by the standards applied to ordinary local governments. The expectations are far higher. The Bangsamoro project was never presented simply as an administrative rearrangement of the Philippine state. It was presented as an alternative based in the historical aspirations of the Bangsamoro people. Consequently, the measure of success cannot be limited to roads, bridges, schools, and other conventional indicators of government performance. The greater challenge lies in demonstrating that Bangsamoro governance embody a higher standard of public service and public morality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many regional documents speak not merely of reducing corruption but of advancing “moral governance,” the latter is a far more ambitious claim. Less corruption is not the same as corruption-free governance. Transparency is not the same as integrity. Efficiency is not the same as moral leadership. If moral governance is to mean anything, it must aspire toward a public order in which corruption is not merely minimized but systematically prevented and socially unacceptable. This may ultimately become the defining test of the autonomy experiment. If autonomy was justified as an expression of the Bangsamoro people’s right to self-determination, then BARMM must demonstrate that self-governance can produce not only better administration but better governance; otherwise, autonomy risks becoming merely a change in political structure rather than a transformation in political culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, the ultimate question is no longer whether autonomy replaced independence. The more pressing question of the day is whether autonomy can deliver what independence once promised: dignity, justice, accountability, and a government genuinely reflective of the moral aspirations of the Bangsamoro people.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Noor Mohammad Saada The Imagined Bangsamoro. When the Moro secessionist movement erupted in the 1970s, its rallying cry was independence from the Philippine body-politic. The objective was not merely local self-government but the establishment of a sovereign Bangsamoro state. This … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essay"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6927,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6926\/revisions\/6927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}