November 1, 2009

Please refer to the colored map showing the Sultanate as having 3 parts with 3 different dates. The history behind this has been deliberately suppressed by the Government of the Republic of the Philippines. The direct descendants of the Prophet are of the Clan of Hashemite, currently the Royal Families of Jordan, Oman, Brunei and the Sultan of Sulu, His Majesty Sultan Muhammad Fuad Abdulla Kiram I.

Sulu was settled by my forefathers in approximately 600 AD, shown in Yellow on the map. When the Sultanate of Brunei came under attack in the 1650s the Sultan asked the help of the Sultanate of Sulu, which was granted in the form of some 600 of our Tausug Warriors fighting and driving away his enemies. As a gesture of gratitude he gifted all of Sabah except the small enclave that he kept for his family, now known as Brunei Darussalam, plus all of the territory from the far reaches of the Spratly Islands including Palawan. The gift was formalized in 1658 and is shown in Blue on the map.

Later, in 1903, the Royal Family of King Luisong Tagean (also later known as Tallano) gifted the western part of Mindanao to the Sultanate (shown in Green on the map) “to prevent escalation of hostilities in Mindanao”. This gift was annotated and endorsed by the then US Governor William Howard Taft June 19, 1903. So, you can see that all of the property shown in color on the map is the PRIVATE PROPERTY of the Sultanate of Sulu, all of it for more than 100 years and some of it for nearly 1500 years.

The precise definition of “Private Property” can be easiest explained by defining what it is NOT. It is not public; it is not “government property”; in fact, nowhere in Mindanao is there any “public property”; public buildings and facilities are on private land with the use granted to the government(s) but the Deed to the property requires that it be returned to its owner when the government is no longer using it. Any, and every, property used by the government within the territory of the Sultanate is required to be returned to the Sultanate when no longer needed by the government or when requested by the Sultanate.

Thus, the government has no authority to grant the use of any property within the Sultanate to any 3rd party--that is the exclusive responsibility of the Property Owner, the Sultanate of Sulu, Inc. This means that the Republic of the Philippines has no authority to make treaties or peace agreements covering parts or all of our Property. It is our position that the ARMM agreement of 1996 was illegal and void ab initio. It was appropriate that the Supreme Court struck down the proposed RP/MILF “Ancestral Domain” agreement even though their reasoning was less than perfect because the RP Constitution was long preceded by the ownership of the property being with the Sultanate. Currently, and far more graphic and newsworthy, is the situation in Sulu wherein the Armed Forces of the Philippines are trespassing on our property, damaging the property of our people, and killing and maiming our people. That has been going on-- attributable to the Philippines--since 1945 and the restitution owed to our people far exceeds the value of this RP government, including its buildings and equipment. The principle of restitution has now been well established in International practice by the agreement of Italy to pay Libya restitution for damages done while it was the colonizer. There can be little doubt that the claim of the Sultanate on behalf of its citizens will indenture this Republic for decades, if not forever, and those citizens will never be required to pay any tax to this government.

Recognizing that condition, what might attract the RP to cling to the notion of holding on to the Sultanate as even as a State in a Federation of States?

In 1996 the MNLF under the Chairmanship of Nur Misuari entered into a “peace agreement” with the RP under the leadership of President Fidel Ramos. Misuari had no authority to obligate the Sultanate to any such agreement, just as Ramos could not legitimately bargain with a non-owner of the property. That agreement, beneficial as it has been in some respects, was null and void ab initio and it still is, even though certain elements of the MNLF continue to attempt to have it enforced. In 2008 the MILF with the assistance of Malaysia took that agreement and greatly improved upon it, had it been with the Sultanate and not with another non-owner entity. However, that agreement could serve as a model agreement under which the Sultanate could manage its own affairs while remaining within the ambit of the Philippines, the only visible alternative being to secede and form its own government.

Some readers are bound to inquire as to why it has taken the Sultan so long to assert his position. There are many reasons going back to an agreement negotiated during the Presidency of Diosdado Macapagal wherein the Sultanate ceded its territory to the RP in exchange for RP’s reclaiming Sabah from Malaysia, an agreement upon which the RP failed to perform and is thus now null and void. However, the effect of the agreement was to discourage any effort on the part of the Sultan at that time to reclaim control of the property and, until the Hashemite Family rules of succession placed the responsibility on the shoulders of me, Sultan Fuad, there was no Sultan with the courage required to accept responsibility for the management of a territory containing some 9 million persons that have been held in poverty and abused for some 4 and one-half Centuries. Now that I have been proclaimed Sultan by the Datus, Sharifs, and Indigenous Tribes, we will proceed to recover complete control of our property—carefully, of course, so as not to damage any of our neighbors.