RANDOLPH PARCASIO is a legal practitioner, consultant, peace advocate and human rights lawyer. He was executive secretary of ARMM from 1996 to 2001, administrator and board member of the Southern Philippines Development Authority (SPDA) in 2001. He served as consultant of several international development and aid agencies, was engaged in the drafting of the ARMM administrative code and its implementing rules and regulations. He was a participant in the Tripartite GPH-OIC-MNLF drafting of a legislative proposal to amend RA 9054 and fully implement the provisions of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement. Presently, he is a consultant to the ARMM.

ANWAR MALANG is a human rights lawyer, politician, and advocate of peace and autonomy. He was executive secretary of the ARMM prior to his current appointment as regional secretary of the DILG-ARMM. In 2001, he was elected councilor of Cotabato City and served as minority floor leader and later as majority floor leader in the city’s legislative council. He ran again for office in 2004 and 2007, won in both occasions, and continued his platform of empowering barangays. He continues to push for the rights to self-determination of the Moro people and influence them to value education as a way to rebuild strife-torn communities. He is an alumnus of the Bridging Leadership program of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM).

AMINA RASUL-BERNARDO is a peace and human rights advocate and president of the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy (PCID). Her engagements encompasses public policy and governance, research and project management, spanning a wide array of expertise that includes children, youth and women, poverty alleviation and promotion of literacy. She obtained a Mid-Career Program Masters in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government (KSG) at the Harvard University as a Mason fellow, Masters in Business Management at the Asian Institute of Management. She finished a Bachelor of Arts degree, major in Economics from the University of the Philippines.

BENEDICTO R. BACANI is the founding executive director of the Institute for Autonomy and Governance (IAG), a policy center based in Cotabato City that specializes in the study of autonomy and good governance as a solution to the Mindanao conflict. He was dean of the College of Law of Notre Dame University in Cotabato City. He has broad international experience in examining political solutions to conflicts and promoting the rights of minorities having been a senior fellow of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington DC, USA and a Hubert Humphrey fellow at the University of Minnesota where he specialized in federalism and conflict management. He was a short-term consultant on constitution-making in Nepal. He was a visiting lecturer at the European University Centre for Peace Studies in Austria. He was based in the Netherlands and Hong Kong for four (4) years as Asia director of an international funding agency that provided grants to programs on education and peace and reconciliation to 13 countries in the region. He has authored books and monographs on Mindanao autonomy, most notably, “Beyond Paper Autonomy: The Challenge in Southern Philippines”, a book published in 2004 that examined the causes of the failures and successes of Muslim Mindanao autonomy.

EDMUND TAYAO is a political analyst, political science professor, expert consultant and a key personality in good local governance in the Philippines. He is the executive director, concurrently serving as vice chairman of the board of trustees, of Local Government Development Foundation (LOGODEF). LOGODEF is one of the most recognized local civil society organizations in the Philippines with focus on strengthening local authorities and promoting local governance in the country. He has been in the forefront of institutional reforms for local governance, initiating collaborated efforts by both local governments and civil society organizations such as the founding of the Philippine Consortium on Good Local Governance (PCGLG) where he heads the secretariat and handles programs and projects. PCGLG is the country’s biggest institutional association of stakeholders in local governance working closely with the national government, policy-makers and development partners. He is also country partner in the Partnership for Democratic Local Governance in Southeast Asia – a project that is being implemented to emulate good practices among local governments in Southeast Asia. He is key expert consultant with the Senate, providing policy inputs to the chairman of and committee on local government.

CHETAN KUMAR is senior advisor with the Governance and Peacebuilding Pillar of the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). His current work focuses on the intersection of governance and peace-building, including questions of decentralization and autonomy; the building of national and local capacities, as part of development assistance, for the prevention and resolution of violent conflict or potentially violent tensions; and the constructive management of diversity or rapid change through national or local dialogue. He has provided significant assistance for the development and implementation of initiatives on these issues in nearly 15 countries over the past two decades in the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, South-and-South-East Asia, and the South Pacific, with results including the successful prevention of anticipated elections-related violence; the reduction of potentially violent tensions or the launch of sustained dialogue efforts; and the development of consensus around governance priorities.He joined the United Nations in 1999. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and has authored several publications on issues pertaining to conflict prevention, peace-building, and governance.

RASOL MITMUG is a lawyer, human rights and peace advocate, policymaker, and legal consultant. Prior to his appointment as chief of staff of the Office of ARMM Regional Governor, he was assistant executive secretary, managing and coordinating ARMM line departments. He was speaker of the ARMM Regional Legislative Assembly (RLA), and deputy executive director of Mindanao Human Rights Action Center (MINHRAC). At MINHRAC, he organized a region-wide human rights, humanitarian and peace process monitoring and advocacy on human rights protection and international humanitarian law. He was consultant for the ARMM with the Office of Senator Teofisto "TG" Guingona III on issues related to ARMM affairs and governance and the Mindanao peace process. As vice president for external affairs of the Muslim Legal Assistance Foundation, he provided pro bono legal services to the underprivileged, especially Muslims in Metro Manila.

IAG will release a policy report based on the proceedings of the roundtable series. Email Ram Toledo, our communications staff, to request a copy: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

Major takeaways from this roundtable:

1. There is no real fiscal autonomy in the ARMM at present

■Why? Because only 5% or so is locally generated of the total budgetary requirements of the ARMM from an area that is berift of investments and economic activity, high poverty incidence and beset with governance problems which greatly affect tax collections in that region.

■There are structural and functional flaws in tax collection system in the ARMM resulting from the provisions of the laws (both national and the ARMM law) that exacerbate the problem on low internally generated revenue.

■Allocation of subsidy from national government to the various regional line agencies in the ARMM is determined by Congress.  Take note that not all national agencies have regional offices in the ARMM. According to Dr. Herwig Mayer, one of the ingredients of fiscal autonomy is having the command over the allocation of financial resources, meaning nobody will tell them where to spend and what to spend on what.

■To be self-sufficient, the ARMM needs at least 20% increase in its annual revenues over the next 20 years or more.

2. The PhP75 billion block grant is a fairy tale.

■Why? Because the block grant is estimated to be about 2.4% of the net internal revenue collections of the past three years or 4% of 60% of the net internal revenue collections of the past three years. (The net internal revenue collections is divided as follows: 40% goes to the LGUs while the 60% goes to the national government.) So it is about PhP27 billion if you take the net internal revenue collections in the past three years.

■The incremental funding because of the BBL is only PhP3 billion a year.

■The block grant is a replacement of the present and not in addition to the present subsidy given to ARMM.

■A unique provision in the BBL that will show intent for self-sufficiency and hopefully will not have a disincentive effect to collect higher revenues in the Bangsamoro is that, any revenue from additional taxes or revenue shares from wealth sharing will be deducted from the block grant.

3. Each Filipino living outside the ARMM will just contribute PhP26.00 as peace dividend to the BBL. According to Dr. Mayer, the right way on how to determine how much money you should get is to first negotiate what you want to do and then the money will follow, not the other way around.

4. Finally, trust is important if we want to establish peace and order situation in Muslim Mindanao and is essential in the successful passage of the BBL.