Hong Kong University Students' Union (HKUSU) Exposure Trip : Philippines 香港大學學生會 藍帽子 周游列國 : 「尋找菲律賓的故事」

Asiaweek reported on April 3, 1998 that in September 1996 Mr. Nur Misuari (once a student of the University of the Philippines), leader of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), was elected governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). After 24 years of on-again, off-again war.

The experiment with autonomy has soured. Misuari is criticized for lengthy absences from the governor's office. He maintains the trips to Manila and overseas are necessary to drum up dollars. But amid the talk and promises, tangible investments have yet to materialize and the less glamorous business of administering the region has bogged down in corruption and inertia. "The MNLF was not prepared to run a bureaucracy and has become part of a corrupt system," says Father Eliseo Mercado, president of Cotabato's Notre Dame University and a key political mediator. "If things have changed, it's for the worse."

Next year comes another plebiscite across a wide swathe of Muslim Mindanao; a yes vote would expand the autonomous region to other provinces. But with at least two governors in the present four-province setup angling to pull out, the prospects for ARMM, let alone a wider body, are bleak. "ARMM is running out of time," says Zacaria Candao, governor of Maguindanao, one of the four provinces currently in the autonomous region. So too, he might well add, is Nur Misuari

Since splitting from the more secular MNLF in 1978, the hardline MILF has remained committed to outright secession. When in 1996 Misuari urged them to join the ARMM experiment, they held back, critical of his compromises. A smart move: On a platform of Islamic social reform and independence, the MILF has been consolidating support across its traditional heartland of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and Cotabato, as well as further afield in former MNLF strongholds of Zamboanga and the islands of Basilan and Sulu (see map).

Last year the MILF's shadowy leader Salamat Hashim slipped back into the Philippines after nearly two decades of exile in the Middle East to preside over the front's 15th Congress.

Hashim, at 55, is both Islamic scholar and politician. Born into a well-to-do family of seven children, near the Cotabato town of Pagalungan, he left Mindanao at 16 for the haj pilgrimage in Mecca, staying to finish secondary studies. Then in 1959 he enrolled at the world's most prestigious seat of Islamic learning, Cairo's Al Azhar University. Before long, Hashim was mixing radical Moro politics with revolutionary Islamist teachings. In 1962 he and friends founded the Moro Liberation Front.

Hashim returned to the Philippines in 1970 to meet Misuari and other radicals. As a librarian in Cotabato, he was caught up in the groundswell of political violence then beginning in Mindanao. It was the vigilantes of the Ilaga movement -- a Christian backlash against rising Muslim assertiveness -- that left an indelible impression on Hashim and most of Mindanao's Muslim community.

Peace has been restored and I have found no major news in the media. I learned from the 1998 EROPA Conference in Macau that the Mindanao Economic Development Council (MEDCO) is one of the partners in the emerging growth triangle in Southeast Asia - the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA). The Asia Development Bank (ADB) conducted an Investigative Study on BIMP-EAGA, and identified over 150 policies, programs and project initiatives that will enable EAGA achieve its full potential.

Sources: see above.

This website is the 3rd draft designed and written for the HKUSU by Anthony C.H. CHUA 蔡誌慶, PhD Student in Law, HKU, and member of Trip001, on 10 March 2000 (then 26 March 2000, 8 Mar 2001) pending formal approvals from the Trip members and from HKUSU, and pending linkage/transfer to the HKUSU website. (please see acknowledgement section in FrontPage)