By Guiamel M. Alim
Executive Director, Kadtuntaya Foundation Inc. (KFI)
Chairperson, Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society (CBCS)

(Presented during the State of the Bakwits CSO-Media Dialogue and Information Exchange on 29 June 2009 at Hotel Estosan, Cotabato City.)

Magandang araw po sa lahat. Peace and Blessings of God be upon us!

Let me thank first the women and men behind this occasion and the leaders of the NGOs who took extra time to make this thing happen.

Peace advocate Atty. Soliman "Sol" M. Santos, Jr. of Naga City, Camarines Sur in the Bicol region makes a fashion/passion statement with the design in the t-shirt he is wearing in the photo. It has to do with adding a crescent moon under the bottom star in an already popular Filipino nationalist design of the day, the sun and three stars like in the Philippine flag. Sol first made his modification on that Filipino nationalist design, adding the crescent moon under the bottom star, for a proposed mini-poster in support of the 1996 GRP-MNLF Final Peace Agreement. The crescent moon and star motif is found in both the MNLF and MILF flags. So, it was then an attempt to depict some kind of constitutional accommodation of Moro aspirations (like autonomy) in relation to the Philippine juridical entity -- in a way that would be more meaningful to Moros (because of the crescent moon's symbolism of Islam) than would be the adding of a ninth ray to the sun (in the first place, the Moro armed resistance to Spain was not part of the Philippine Revolution of 1896 starting with eight provinces in Luzon). Sol's design might also be said to be an attempt to combine Filipino nationalism and Moro nationalism, if that can be done at all, without a clash of nationalisms.