it’s too long. Federalism is the short term solution that can be implemented now to achieve long term peace and stable democracy. here’s why:

Federalism emphasizes regional and local self-rule and self-reliance in governance, based on the principle of subsidiarity. This means that decisions should be made at the lowest possible level where the problems can be solved.

“Federalism emphasizes respect for the socio-cultural diversity of the people and seeks national unity in regional diversity. It promotes national solidarity and cooperation in governance, nation-building, modernization and development.

While regional or state governments are designed to be autonomous in their regional and local affairs in relation to the federal government, the federal government provides assistance to the various regions and states, especially the less developed ones, as in all federal systems in the world.”

Decentralization is Federalism. It means to break down centralized power. Because of the serious weaknesses and disadvantages of our unitary system:

Our unitary system is highly centralized. With very limited powers and authority and inadequate resources, most of our local governments cannot provide the public services that our people need and expect.

National taxes siphon or take away much of the wealth and revenues generated by agriculture and other industries in various local communities around the country. Major corporations, including banks, pay their taxes in Metro Manila whose cities benefit more from their activities than the provinces and other cities in which the branches of the corporations y operate.

Local officials have to spend much of their time and energy and their limited funds seeking the assistance and approval of national government officials in Metro Manila.

Local dependence on the national government stifles local initiative and resourcefulness, and hampers local business and development.

Our unitary system is not sensitive to our cultural diversity. The nation has many ethno-linguistic and cultural communities and a large Muslim minority, the Moros. The migration of large numbers of people from other parts of the country has led to the loss of their identity and ancestral domain and to their
landlessness and poverty.

Decades of unitary rule under the policy of assimilation and national integration have marginalized the Moros and other indigenous peoples in various parts of the country. Meanwhile many settlers in Mindanao and other
regions are becoming prosperous. Deteriorating relations between the Moros and the national government have led to many years of violence and rebellion —the death, displacement and suffering of thousands of people.

Under our unitary system the efforts to promote local autonomy since the 1950s have reached a dead end, because of the reluctance of most national political leaders to decentralize the powers of the national government. The centralization of power enhances their power and control over the local communities.

Thus under our traditional unitary Republic since 1946, and our presidential form of government, our government and leaders have generally failed to effectively address our problems and continuing underdevelopment—our
poverty, social inequality, unemployment, inadequate social services, the lack of transparency and accountability that breeds corruption, the government’s increasing deficits and public debt, endemic rebellion, etc.

For these reasons the federalist movement seeks to change our highly centralized unitary structure to a decentralized structure of autonomous local governments leading to a federal system, in addition to a parliamentary government.

http://www.i-site.ph/Focus/ConCom/Abueva-Why-Change-from-Unitary-to-Federal-Republic.pdf

the Filipino has to beat-up on the Moro to feel good and to feel that he exists and he has to inflict pain on a people that he considers a “lesser people”

what arrant nonsense! if you are not a muslim, live in muslim areas in mindanao, and see who beats-up on who

I am saddened by the Filipino bloggers that you quote. They are so ignorant of Moro history. It just shows you that the Filipinos are really a “people without history” and have become “little brown brothers” and who through their diaspora have become globalization’s modern slaves being paid slave wages by Middle East Muslim potentates.

Don’t these people ever wonder why Moros don’t want to be under a country whose “government is run like hell by Filipinos” when even Filipino Indios Bravos are leaving it in droves? What does Philippine citizenship offer in terms of integration and assimilation when the Philippines does not offer comfort, progress or well-being but misery and a large dose of life’s uncertainties. Your English speaking bloggers, young Filipinos, are so “smug” but that is only their individual achievement when the country is a mess. Don’t worry I do believe that the Americans have plans of taking back Mindanao from the mis-management of the Filipinos. TRULY THE FILIPINO IS A COLONIZED PEOPLE SA ISIP, SA SALITA AT SA GAWA.

Scholars have written books about the Moro Sultanates (nation-states) even during Spanish times, e.g. Thomas Forrest “Voyage in the Moluccas” and explorer William Dampier. There is of course Cesar Majul, Najeed Saleeby, Combes, Ruudje Laarhoven’s “Triumph of (Moro) Diplomacy”, H.V. Dela Costa, Shinzo Hayase’s “Mindanao Ethnohistory, Beyond Nations”, McKenna’s “Muslim Rulers and Rebels”, James Francis Warren’s “Sulu Zone” , Schuck-Montemayor’s “Saga of a German Sea Captain”, and many more.

The Sultanate of Maguindanao and Sultanate of Sulu lost their sovereignty not because the Filipino Indios conquered them but because the U.S. created the semi-independent Moro Province uniting these two sultanates into one body-polity which your great-grandfather Quezon by his political machinations was able to convince the Americans to hand over to Filipino administration without need to fight it out with the Moros because by that time the Moros had surrendered their weapons to the Americans on the promise that they too will have a separate independence from the Filipino Indios.

(Galing ng loleng mo di ba? Sayang Manolo you should have demanded from the Philippine government compensation for the services of your forebear in getting Mindanao for the Philippines. Eh, dapat magalit ka kasi iba ang nakikinabang sa ginawa ng loleng mo. Kawawa ka naman billions and billions of pesos from the wealth of Mindanao hindi man lang kayo ng pamilya mo nabigyan ng kahati. Remember the Quezon’s Mindanao colonization act).

I want you to read Hawaii’s tragic case of STOLEN KINGDOM because that is what happened to the Moros. The young people don’t know the glorious history of the Moro sultanates who had diplomatic and treaty relations with the great powers, the Dutch, the British, the Germans and the superpower of the day, Spain as suzerein nation-states. The Moro glory in history diminishes Filipino Indios because the tragic history of the Filipinos was “serfdom and vassalage” while the Moros had centuries of freedom.

Typical of a bully, or somebody who just joined a fraternity who was abused before joining the fraternity of nations, or was a loser in history for the longest time, or a victim of history for a long time and continues to be a victim of globalization as modern day slaves, the Filipino has to beat-up on the Moro to feel good and to feel that he exists and he has to inflict pain on a people that he considers a “lesser people” (in his own imagination which the Americans gave him as a “white man’s burden” even though he is just a “little brown brother”). The Filipino can always say to himself the mantra I am better than the Moro and that there is somebody that the Filipino can beat-up to feel good about himself. How pathetic can you get? Filipinos with all their pretensions cannot change the reality that they are the “slaves of the world” and that is the role they have played since the colonization of Spain of las islas Filipinas. How unfortunate that Manila would have developed as a strong Sultanate if only Raja Lakandula and Raja Soliman were allowed to have ruled for at least 50 years before the Spaniards came then it would have developed into a true nation-state not this Fabricated State named after syphilitic King Phillip II or in Spanish Felipe.

Read Joe Fallon’s “Igorot and moro National Reemergence: The Fabricated Philippine State” at http://www.cwis.org/fwj/21/imnr.html.

We are easily outraged by how a group defy the law. Were we ever bothered during all the time that our government denied them the law? There is RA 8371 that concerns ancestral lands and indigenous peoples. Was it ever implemented as it should be? Never mind that basic services does not reach their communities!

This is no justification for the dastardly acts. It just opens a path for lasting solutions.

Brianb (at 6:02 pm), whether bombs or bolos, dead is dead, or are you saying that a child who is killed in a crossfire is somehow better off than a child who is deliberately hacked?

UPn, (at 6:24 pm) that’s a baseless accusation on your part. If you read my comment (at 12:23 pm), i did call it an atrocity.