Filed
First Reading
Referred to the Committee on Rules, Committee on Finance, Budget and ManagementNow
Parliament Bill No. 177
In committeeAn Act Creating a Mujahideen Memorial Wall in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and Providing Funds Therefor
Filed
First Reading
Referred to the Committee on Rules, Committee on Finance, Budget and ManagementNow
Under committee study or floor debate. Amendments are still possible, and this is the stage where public input carries the most weight.
What this measure does
Eight articles and 2 pages. This directs the Bangsamoro Commission for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage to establish a Mujahideen Memorial Wall in the region, carrying a list of the names of certified Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Moro National Liberation Front members who died in the struggle for the right to self-determination.
Article 4 creates a Committee of 5 members appointed by the Chief Minister, whose single task is to establish the eligibility criteria for standard verification in identifying the Mujahideen, and to give the heritage commission the final list of names for inclusion.
Funds come from the general appropriations of the Bangsamoro. The bill names no site, no dimensions, no design and no deadline.
Why it was proposed
The authority cited is Section 24 of Article IX of the Organic Law — the Bangsamoro Government's duty to preserve the history, culture, arts, traditions and rich cultural heritage of the Bangsamoro people.
The measure's purpose is to put the dead of both fronts on a single wall. The MNLF and the MILF fought the same war in different decades and signed separate agreements with the national government, and a memorial that names members of both is a statement that the struggle was one struggle.
Who it affects
- Families of MNLF and MILF members who died in the conflict, whose relatives' names may appear.
- Families whose relatives are not certified, who have no route to inclusion that the bill describes.
- The Bangsamoro Commission for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, which must build and hold the Wall.
- A 5-member Committee appointed by the Chief Minister, which sets who counts as Mujahideen.
- Both former fronts, whose dead are commemorated together on one monument.
Who would implement it
- Bangsamoro Commission for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, which establishes the Wall
- A Committee of 5 appointed by the Chief Minister, which sets the eligibility criteria and supplies the final list of names
Funding
Carries an appropriation. No amount is named; the funds necessary are charged against the general appropriations of the Bangsamoro. For comparison, the 2 commemorative measures that became law in this registry carry figures — BAA 61 appropriates ₱15 million for the Camp Abubakar memorial and eco-park, and BAA 60 ₱5 million for the Hashim and Mimbantas memorial site.
What changes if it becomes law
- The region would acquire a single memorial naming the dead of both the MNLF and the MILF.
- A committee would fix, for the first time, the criteria for who counts as a Mujahideen who died in the struggle.
- The heritage commission takes on a third commemorative site.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
The committee is the whole bill, and the bill does not notice it. Five people appointed by the Chief Minister would decide the eligibility criteria for who counts among the dead of a 5-decade armed struggle, and then supply the final list of names. There is no appeal, no grievance mechanism, no requirement to consult the families, and no standard the criteria must meet — the Act delegates the question entirely and says nothing about how it should be answered.
That gap is the more striking because Parliament had already addressed it. BAA 61, the Camp Abubakar memorial act, requires its management board to keep a functioning grievance mechanism and to consult and actively involve local communities, precisely because the hardest question in a memorial is whose names go on it. BAA 60 seats a representative of each family on the board governing the site where their relatives are buried. This bill, filed in May 2023 between those 2 measures, carries neither.
The word "certified" is where the difficulty concentrates. Certification implies a record, and the registry shows what records exist: the veteran mujahideen bills establish that determining who served, and for how long, requires asking the MILF and MNLF Central Committees, because the fronts kept the only lists there are. So the committee's criteria will in practice be applied to names supplied by the organisations whose dead are being commemorated — which is unavoidable and worth stating, since it means the state is ratifying a list rather than compiling one.
Commemorating both fronts on 1 wall is the bill's substantive contribution and it is not a small one. The MNLF signed in 1996 and the MILF in 2014, and the relationship between them has not always been easy. A monument that does not distinguish between their dead is a political act in the direction of a single Bangsamoro history, and it is the only measure in this registry that treats the 2 movements as one.
Sources