1■ In understanding power relations in Muslim Mindanao, we need to understand the concept of institutional multiplicity and integrity and we need to challenge simplistic propositions offered by advocates of good governance and democracy. Frankly put, to understand legitimacy and authority in Muslim Mindanao means going beyond simple western notions or conceptions of good governance.

Institutional multiplicity really refers to the ability of individuals and organizations to place themselves in multiple institutional systems. Institutions as rule systems, and people are governed by different rule systems. Multiplicity just simply means that they are able to strategically shift from one institutional universe to another, depending on what a particular situation demands.

Institutional integrity means that, as some people argue, institutions that actually matter are those that are indigenously designed or adopted and seemed to be more effective than those rule systems that are brought from the outside and imposed on Muslim Mindanao.

2■ To understand the foundations of legitimacy and authority in Muslim Mindanao, we need to recognize the historical origins and sources of power of what is called in the literature local strongmen or men of prowess including the nature and dynamics of clan institutions.

The notion of a strongman rule in Muslim Mindanao is measured not just through skills but one’s ability to forge alliances coupled with the ability to wage war and extend that authority across borders.

Clan dynamics determine inheritance rules. They observe rules in allocating the use of land. They provide protection to members. They often demand that rebel members join them whenever a rido erupts. They deliver the votes, the candidates that are either clan members or supported by the clan. They’re distinguished by their level of engagement in the legal economy, providing capital and mediating when conflicts arise, and their networks extend beyond Muslim Mindanao.

Clan institutions trump all other institutions including constitutional rules, local governments, rules on devolution, even Islamic rule systems including rebel rule systems and including international rules and agreements imposed by aid givers. In fact, one new criterion for becoming a local strongman in Mindanao is your closeness to official development assistance (ODA) sources, your ability to attend embassy dinners and gatherings and the ability to use those connections to privilege your region or your clan.

3■ To understand the nature of the political transitions that have occurred and the political transition that will occur following the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), we need to focus our attention on the decisive role that local elites will play. It is these local elites who can make or unmake the state building project in Muslim Mindanao.

4■ To recognize the potential for transition-induced violence, we must study the ungoverned spaces of Muslim Mindanao and the evolution and resilience of Mindanao’s shadow economies. Unless we are able to understand the role that shadow economies play in the economic, social and political life of people in Muslim Mindanao, we will not be able to bring about lasting and enduring development, and neither can we fashion an enduring or durable peace in the region.

Most incomes and employment come from the informal sector, thus some argue that if you want to study economic development in Mindanao, do not study the formal economy. Study the illegal economy of Mindanao. Look at how high is the informal employment in the ARMM. Nearly 80 percent of total employment in the region is informal in nature.

One can look at it as a statebuilding phenomenon but one can also look at it as a survival mechanism. However, Prof. Lara prefers to look at shadow economies as an arena for legitimacy construction in the creation of inclusive political settlements. To illustrate, people in Muslim Mindanao continuously reward and perpetually elect incompetent, dangerous, violent, and corrupt public officials? It is because of the arrangement that is fostered by the current situation where all internal revenue allotments are practically captured 100 percent by local town officials but they ignore the operations of shadow economies. In short, the people will elect the politicians who will not touch the livelihoods done informally.

The problem that will be faced by the new batch of Bangsamoro leadership is how they will deal with Mindanao’s shadow economies. Obviously, it cannot be dealt with it in a one-size-fits-all approach. The point is to be able to hit hard, to hit viciously against the pernicious aspects of that shadow economy but to treat other aspects of that economy like secondary land markets, for example, informal land markets, informal credit or illicit cross border trade in a different manner from the way you would hit back others.

5■ In coming up with a BBL, the Senate might want to take into account a more challenging perspective like the pointers given by the Solomon Islands case, which are: i) address the concern over the erosion of traditional governance structures and authority; ii) clear out confusion over the complex interplay between levels of governance; iii) promote broader participation in decision-making; and iv), firm up development policies on issues that affect the life of people of Mindanao and enhance delivery of basic services.

6■ There is a mutual recognition that the current status in terms of the totality of the relations between the Bangsamoro and the national government is unacceptable. Why? Because there is no real autonomy particularly fiscal autonomy. There is just a decentralization of the power but it is still Congress that holds the power. And one of the key provisions in the BBL that attempt to redefine the unacceptable present relation between the national government and the Bangsamoro is the establishment of an asymmetric relationship between the Bangsamoro government and the national government. But the context with which this new relationship will be based has to be clear.

7■ Another principle taken from the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland is the principle of parity of esteem, which means that, there has to be a recognition of the identity of the Bangsamoro, as well as accord the same identity with respect. Mutual respect is important. And this one is expressed in the power sharing agreement which is a different kind of arrangement than the one that you have currently in the ARMM or in the local government units.

8■ Another key principle is the institutionalization of an intergovernmental relations mechanism. First, it will allow the evolution of the relationship between the Bangsamoro and the central government in the future. Second, it provides a new channel for advocacy for RSB for Bangsamoro that one does not have to resort to violence to improve the relationship between the national government and the Bangsamoro government; that there is a mechanism to continue the negotiations beyond the life of the peace panel into a new mechanism in the basic law, that is your intergovernmental relations mechanism and, therefore, it avoids the pitfall of previous agreements where differences are settled through war.

9■ In trying to insulate the elections in the Bangsamoro so that it becomes more of a real election where constituencies would be able to vote for their representatives is to divide the Bangsamoro territory into parliamentary districts and single member representation in the parliament. Why is that? The driving principle for this is that, if it is a parliamentary election, it will be difficult for the national government to dictate on who would be the chief minister of the Bangsamoro because there will be no election for a regional governor directly elected where the national government can influence the voters to vote for a favored regional governor candidate.

10■ The institution of the Wali is another way to insulate the Bangsamoro parliament in the event there is a vote of no confidence from the influence of the national government. Because, normally, if there is no provision for Wali, what would come out would be an assertion of the supervision power of the President, and therefore he would call for new elections and, in the meantime, determine who would probably become the chief minister. In such case, there is an institution, the Wali, to make sure that decision-making is confined to the Bangsamoro, not dictated by the national government.

11■ Another relationship is between the Bangsamoro government and local government units (LGUs). In the framework agreement on the Bangsamoro, it provides that the provinces, cities, municipalities, barangays and geographic areas within its territory shall be the constituent units of the Bangsamoro. The authority to regulate the affairs of the constituent units is guaranteed within the limit of the Bangsamoro Basic Law. The privileges already enjoyed by the local government units under existing law shall not be diminished, unless otherwise altered, modified or reformed for good governance pursuant to the provision of the Bangsamoro Local Government Code. Supervision over the LGUs is subsumed under the power sharing agreement that gives power to the Bangsamoro with respect to LGUs as constituent units. It is not derived from the general supervision-power of the President under RA 9054.

12■ There is a choice of what representational structure there would be in the Bangsamoro: parliamentary, presidential or, some mix between the two. And in those mixes, sometimes the president is more powerful than the prime minister, sometimes the prime minister is more powerful than the president. So you can have relatively more centralized or decentralized federal systems, or relatively more centralized or decentralized unitary systems. And across that continuum, you can even have unitary systems that are more decentralized than a centralized federal system. So there’s nothing magical about federalism and sort of bringing in about decentralization because there’s many centralized federal systems as well. So one can mix and match across these types of political reform, representational structures, electoral systems and federal or unitary.

13■ What is the key difference between a presidential and a parliamentary system? Matthew Shugart, a scholar from the University of California, has summarized the difference between presidential and parliamentary systems.

Presidential has three basic features. First of all, the executive is headed by a popular elected president who serves as chief executive. Second, the terms of the chief executive and the legislative assembly or assemblies are fixed and not subject to mutual confidence. So elected separately and there’s no need for the president to get the confidence of the Senate and the House in order to stay in office. Third, the president names and directs the cabinet and has some constitutionally granted lawmaking authority. That, in a nutshell, is what the presidential system is all about.

Parliamentary rests on a very different principle—executive authority arises out of the legislative body and can be dismissed by it. This means that legislators necessarily have to organize themselves to elect an executive and be able to maintain or not that executive in power. How do they do that? This is where the role of political parties and coalitions of political parties comes in. If there are no coherent political parties, it can be a free for all. Parliamentary systems are likely to be quite unstable. The catch is that—parliamentary systems need strong political parties but they do not readily create those parties unto themselves. They need them but they do not create.

14■ Professor Croissant emphasizes the importance of political parties for the proper functioning of any democratic regime, how they play key role in organizing the government and how important they are as intermediate structures between the executive and the parliament. Two things bear special emphasis. First, the party systems’ contribution to how to form a government; Secondly, its contribution to the fortune of parliamentary majorities. Both of these things are needed in a parliamentary system. It can be assumed generally that relations of the executive to the parliament in any regime will be smoother when, first of all, political parties are moderately disciplined; and secondly, there is a lower level of fragmentation in the party system. So discipline and consolidation, to put it in converse terms, are important.

A fragmented party system makes it hard to form one-party majorities. So if there is no coherent party system, it will be hard to get a parliamentary system to actually form those majorities. And why are majorities important in a parliamentary system? Because it is out of the legislature that the executive is formed. So if this cannot be done, there will be no strong executive.

So cohesion within the parties results in undisciplined party behavior in a parliament and uncertain and unstable political majorities. The less stable the majorities, the more the executive must seek to build and have coalitions through what is called “bilateral bargaining” within individual members of parliament. This is a fancy way of saying “pork barrel”—ad hoc coalitions through bilateral bargaining. So in order to lubricate the process and to keep that coalition in place, there is not going to be cohesion of parties but there is a need to lubricate the system by putting through high levels of pork. So parties are critical to the functioning of democracy, and especially to the functioning of parliamentary democracies where one has to rely on the parliament to determine executive authority.

15■ The organizationally unstable, volatile, party systems that are marked by high degrees of clientilism and personalism are too weak, too fragmented, and too deficient in authority to do what needs to be done in a parliamentary system, and that is to change and lead the government towards a responsible party government.

So if a parliamentary system is established without simultaneously creating corresponding parties, the undesirable outcomes could be: cronyism, short-term policy planning, ad hoc coalitions by the government, deficient orientation to collective goods. So the obstacles to efficient and responsible government are exacerbated by weakness of political parties.

16■ To change from presidential to parliamentary, there is a need to change a representational structure. To do this, there is a need to think about how to build stronger parties, and here comes the importance of electoral system reform and, in particular, proportional representation being more likely than plurality systems to shift the development away from personalistic towards problematic parties.

17■ If a parliamentary system is being considered in the Bangsamoro, one can draw in on the insights of Professors Croissant and Shugart about proportional representation as a way to do that. But keep it in mind that, the consolidation of a party system is going to take a long time. It is not something that pops up overnight. A new parliamentary government has to cope, at least for a certain amount of time, with what he calls old, fragmented, clientelistic, and irresponsible party.