MILF: Gov’t to change Office of Muslim Affairs to Office of Muslim Filipino Affairs?

September 15, 2009 - A bill has been filed in Congress that would change the name of the Office of Muslim Affairs (OMA) into Office of Muslim Filipino Affairs (OFMA) and would be directly under the Office of the President, instead of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP).

This was reported to www.luwaran.com/net by an informant in the Senate who is privy to working of the Philippine Congress.

This website is still validating the report and an attempt to reach out to the OMA in Manila failed. OMA Executive Director Datu Ali Sangki cannot be reached for comment.

However, an unnamed source disclosed that the OMA, after one of its key officials attended the Senate hearing on the proposed bill, told senators that if there is a change in the status of the OMA, it should be for the better; meaning, make it a department with porfolio and not just part of the litany of abolition and replacement of agencies that managed Moro affairs.

“We were not even consulted by the proponent of the bill except only now in the final stretch when we our views would be hardly heard,” complained the OMA official, “and we are the most affected people and agency of government.”

The source also disclosed that Senator Nene Pimentel and Congressman Pax Mangudadatu supported the OMA’s view that the OMA be elevated to a full department status.

The report said that Senator Miguel Zubiri, who hails from Bukidnon, sponsored bill in the Senate.

Commenting on this, Mohammad Ameen, chairperson of the MILF Secretariat, told this website in an interview that the struggle for Moro nationhood has already gain momentum and there is no stopping anymore.

The government, he said, can introduce obstacles but it is our people that could determine the outcome not external forces.

“We are not Filipinos,” he clarified, “because only subjects of Spain rightly fall under such category and the Moros were never under Spain throughout their colonial presence in the Philippines for more than 300 years.

At first only Spamniards borne in the Philippines were called Filipinos but during the 1996 Philippine Revolution, as a consolation to the revolutionaries, Spain also called them as such and subsequently applied to the entire population of Luzon and Visayas. Before this, they were pejoratively called “Indios”, while those in Mindanao and Sulu were called as “Moros”.

Ameen told the government not to be so scared of Moro becoming a nation, saying that other countries especially the United States have many nationalities within their bounbdaries and actually benefitted therefrom.

“It is not bad to have two nations, Filipinos and Bangsamoros, in this country,” he assured, adding that the latter would be given the chance to prove that they are equal to every nation on earth.

Meanwhile, a Moro analyst based in Manila, who requested anonymity, described the pending bill as a calibrated attempt of the government to stamp out any trace of Muslims as distinct and separate from the so-called larger Filipino nation.

He said this effort is in every aspect a follow up of government integrative policy while at the same ensuring that religious divide is maintained and friction-prone.

“The government is simply diluting what it already conceded in the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) which stipulated that the Moros are not only Muslims but also have already acquired the status of a nation, the Bangsamoro,” he further explained.


Source: http://www.luwaran.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=956:govt-to-change-office-of-muslim-affairs-to-office-of-muslim-filipino-affairs&catid=81:moro-news&Itemid=372