The Palace legal team has found certain provisions in the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law that need to be fine-tuned to ensure smooth passage of the measure when it reaches Congress, Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma said Sunday.

The draft BBL, once passed into law, will pave the way for the creation for a new political entity to be called Bangsamoro that would replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The draft was supposed to have been submitted to Congress in May, but the vetting process took longer than expected. The target date has been moved to July 28, when session resumes.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) said Sunday that the delay in the draft law might be a sign that Malacañang was having second thoughts.

“Well, I think this a way of Malacanang by telling us that they have some reservations on some provisions of the BBL or they are telling us that they have different views on certain points of the BBL and they might be planning rewrite some of these provisions,” said MILF vice chairman for political affairs Ghadzali Jaafar.

He said while the deliberations were part of the process, the MILF could not wait forever for the passage of the basic law.

“We’re not frustrated but we are concerned about the delay,” Jaafar said.

Earlier, Senator Miriam Santiago questioned the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, saying the peace pact between the government and the MILF was unconstitutional.

Santiago, head of the Senate committee on constitutional amendments, said the CAB violated the principle of constitutional supremacy.

She said the agreement establishes not a mere autonomous region as provided for by the Constitution but a sub-state, which will exercise certain sovereign powers that should be reserved only for the central government.

The CAB puts together the framework agreement on the Bangsamoro; the four annexes on power-sharing, wealth-sharing, normalization, and transitional arrangements; the addendum on Bangsamoro waters; and the 1997 ceasefire agreement.

Under the wealth-sharing annex, the Bangsamoro will also enjoy 100 percent of resources from non-metallic minerals such as sand, gravel and quarry and 75 percent of income from the exploration, development and use of metallic minerals within the region. Only income derived from fossil fuels and uranium shall be shared equally by the Bangsamoro with the central government.

Under the annex on power-sharing, the Bangsamoro assembly shall have at least 50 members representing district, party-list, sectoral and reserved seats. The assembly shall be headed by a chief minister, who will be elected by majority votes from among the members of the assembly.

The national government will have reserved powers on defense and external security, foreign policy, coinage and monetary policy, postal service, citizenship and naturalization, immigration, customs and tariff, common market and global trade, and intellectual property rights.

The government and the Bangsamoro will have 14 jointly-shared powers, including social security and pensions, land registration, pollution control, penology, coast guard, civil service and maintenance of national roads and bridges.

The Bangsamoro, on the other hand, will have 58 exclusive powers, including tourism, creation of sources of revenue, power generation, ancestral domain and natural resources, and management of all fishery, marine and aquatic resources within the Bangsamoro territorial jurisdiction.

The Bangsamoro government will also have authority and jurisdiction over the exploration, development and use of mines and minerals within its territory.

Last month, President Benigno Aquino III and MILF chairman Murad Ebrahim discussed the delay in the submission of the draft BBL when the two met during the sidelines of a peace conference in Hiroshima, Japan.

After his 10-minute meeting with Murad, the President ended speculations that some provisions of the draft BBL were unconstitutional.

“As to constitutionality, I don’t agree with the premise that there is (a need) to make sure it’s constitutional. From the start, the Constitution was a guiding document in crafting the Framework Agreement so the Basic Law that gives the details should also be consistent,” Aquino said.

The President, however, acknowledged that “there’s a need to further refine the language so that it really states a meeting of the minds of both parties.”

Aquino expressed confidence that there is still enough time for Congress to pass the measure, hold the plebiscite in the proposed Bangsamoro territory, and put in place an interim government ahead of the 2016 polls.

“I can assure the Filipino people that we will be exerting all efforts to ensure that this measure is passed in a timely manner because the dream still is to give the new Bangsamoro government time to demonstrate its abilities and the time that they need as a minimum is a year and six months. So, we’re hoping that all the steps will be done that they can sit already in office by January of 2015,” Aquino said.

Earlier, Jaafar called on Aquino to rally his allies in Congress to keep their earlier commitment of passing the BBL by December, after which the plebiscite will be held in the first quarter of 2015.

The plebiscite will cover the current provinces and cities in the ARMM, the cities of Isabela and Cotabato, six municipalities in Lanao del Norte, and 39 barangays in six municipalities of Cotabato province.

After the plebiscite, the government aims to put the Bangsamoro Transition Authority in place to serve as interim government until the elections in 2016. –  Joyce Pangco Panares with Florante S. Solmerin/Manila Standard Today