DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 27 July) – Noting that conditions seven years ago have been “significantly mitigated or reduced,” President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday issued Proclamation 298, lifting “effective immediately,” former President Rodrigo Duterte’s Proclamation 55 which declared a “state of national emergency on account of lawless violence in Mindanao” in September 2016.
The lifting, according to Proclamation 298, aims to “boost economic activity and hasten the recovery of the local economy.” The Official Gazette has posted copies of Proclamations 297 and 301 dated July 21 and 25, respectively, but has not posted a copy of Proclamation 298 dated July 25, 299 and 300 as of 12 noon on July 27.
MindaNews obtained a certified copy of Proclamation 298.
Antonio Peralta, chair of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines – Southern Mindanao Business Council hailed the lifting as a “welcome development as it would start the process of correcting Mindanao’s image which has considerably improved greatly over the last few years.”
“We believe this will allow senior executives and their employees to come and explore business opportunities in Mindanao because now they can be covered by their insurance firms,” Peralta told MindaNews.
“Previously, they could not travel given the higher risk,” he said.
Proclamation 55 has been repeatedly cited in travel advisories against Mindanao even as its scope is nationwide. Even embassies have advisories against travel in some parts of Mindanao for their staff and nationals.
Secretary Mabel Acosta, chair of the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) wrote President Marcos on June 26, requesting him to lift Proclamation 55.
Adrian Tamayo, head of the Public Relations Division of MinDA told MindaNews that Acosta wrote the President “based on the recommendations of the Joint Foreign Chambers, the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry-Mindanao, the local business chambers, the Mindanao Development Forum discussions where the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, Philippine National Police, Armed Forces of the Philippines, Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity and the rest of the public safety and security sector all convincingly presented that there is no more lawless violence in Mindanao.”
He said the Department of Foreign Affairs also strongly supported the initiative to request the President to lift Proclamation 55.
Tamayo said that with Proclamation 55 still in effect, the business communities in Mindanao experienced difficulties in “elevating attractiveness of the island for investment and travel, amidst a generally peaceful and safe Mindanao.”
2016 to 2023
Between 2016 and 2023, the peace processes involving the Bangsamoro in Mindanao went into implementation phase while the other major peace process – with the National Democratic Front – collapsed under the Duterte administration.
Duterte placed the entire Mindanao under martial law from May 23, 2017, Day 1 of the Marawi Siege, had it extended thrice until December 31, 2019, even as he declared Marawi “liberated from the terrorist influence” on October 17, 2017.
Duterte called off the peace negotiations with the NDF in December 2017 and tagged the Communist Party of the Philippines and New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) as terrorist organizations. After the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 was passed, the Anti-Terrorism Council designated the CPP-NPA as terrorist organizations under ATC Resolution 12 in December 2020 and the NDF under Resolution 21 in June 2021.
The security sector has been reporting a decline in the number of the NPA in Mindanao which, for a time, hosted the most number of guerrilla fronts and combatants. The NDF’s Mindanao leader, Jorge Madlos aka Ka Oris, was killed in October 2021 in Bukidnon.
In the Bangsamoro peace processes, Republic Act 11054, the enabling act of the government’s peace pact with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front — the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro signed in 2014 during the Aquino administration – was passed in 2018 under the Duterte administration. The law was ratified in a plebiscite in January 2019, paving the way for the inauguration of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) which is currently being run by an 80-member Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA).
The BTA is the governing body during the transition period that was supposed to have ended on June 30, 2022 but was extended to June 30, 2025 through the postponement of the first election of the Bangsamoro Parliament from May 2022 to May 2025.
The transition period was extended to 2025 by Congress under Duterte but he left it to Marcos to appoint members of the BTA who would serve during the extended transition from June 30, 2022 to June 30, 2025.
Among the BTA members Marcos appointed are the son and daughter of Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) founding chair Nur Misuari, and five other members of the MNLF under Misuari.
The MNLF under Muslimin Sema and Yusoph Jikiri were represented in the MILF-dominated Bangsamoro Transition Commission from 2017 to 2019 and the BTA since 2019. The then undivided MNLF had earlier signed with the government the Tripoli Agreement of 1976 and the Final Peace Agreement in 1996.
“Significant gains”
Proclamation 298 said the government has made “significant gains” in improving and restoring peace and order in the region through “successful focused military and law enforcement operations and programs that promote sustainable and inclusive peace” and conditions then prevailing for which Proclamation 55 was issued, “have been significantly mitigated or reduced.”
Duterte issued Proclamation 55 on September 4, 2016, two days after a bomb exploded at the Roxas night market in downtown Davao City, killing15 persons and injuring at least 70 others. Terrorists were blamed for the bombing.
In justifying his declaration, Duterte cited the “long and complex history of lawless violence perpetrated by private armies and local warlords, bandits and criminal syndicates, terrorist groups, and religious extremists” in Mindanao, and a spate of violent and lawless acts across many parts of Mindanao in recent months, “including abductions, hostage-takings and murder of innocent civilians, bombing of power transmission facilities, highway robberies and extortions, attacks on military outposts, assassinations (of) media people and mass jailbreaks;”
which killed 15 persons and injured 70. MindaNews photo by Carolyn O. Arguillas
The Roxas night market bombing was only one of six reasons Duterte cited for declaring a state of national emergency. In fact, then Presidential Chief Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo said Duterte had planned to declare it even before the September 2 bombing in Davao City.
“Hindi ‘yan nag-trigger. (The Davao bombing did not trigger that). Actually, nasa planning stage na ‘yan (declaration). In fact, nagda-draft na nga kami ng proclamation eh,” GMA Online News quoted Panelo as telling its Super Radyo dzBB on September 4, 2016.
Panelo cited four reasons behind Duterte’s planned declaration: the government’s campaign against illegal drugs, criminality, terrorism, and the offensive against the Abu Sayyaf Group.
Proclamation 55 directed the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police to “undertake such measures as may be permitted by the Constitution and existing laws to suppress any and all forms of lawless violence in Mindanao and to prevent such lawless violence from spreading and escalating elsewhere in the Philippines, with due regard to the fundamental civil and political rights of our citizens.”
Proclamation 55 failed to prevent the Marawi Siege of 2017.
Duterte did not lift Proclamation 55 when he placed the entire Mindanao – then comprising 26 provinces and 33 cities — under a state of martial law on May 23, 2017, Day 1 of the Marawi Siege.
Martial law in Mindanao was supposedly for 60 days only but he sought an extension which Congress granted, thrice, until December 31, 2019. In lifting martial law in Mindanao, Proclamation 55 continued to be in effect.
Duterte in 2016 told reporters the State of National Emergency, to be implemented nationwide, was effective immediately “until there is threat against the people and against the nation” and “until such time I say that it’s safe for everybody.”
Duterte, the first Mindanawon to rule the nation, stepped down as President on June 30, 2022, without lifting Proclamation 55. (Carolyn O. Arguillas / MindaNews)
Proclamation 55
