On Monday, September 14, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in the southern Philippines held its first parliamentary election since the autonomous government was established. In a region that endured prolonged armed conflict, residents choosing representatives of the autonomous government through the ballot marked a major milestone in the peace process between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

　The newly elected Bangsamoro Parliament has 80 seats: 40 party-list proportional-representation seats, 32 seats elected from electoral districts, and 8 special seats reserved for women, youth, indigenous peoples, settlers, and Islamic scholars, among others. Rather than residents directly electing the region’s Chief Minister, BARMM has adopted a Japanese-style “parliamentary cabinet system,” in which elected members of parliament choose the Chief Minister themselves.

　Roughly 2.4 million voters were registered, and the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines deployed more than 20,000 personnel for the election. Even so, shooting incidents occurred in Cotabato City and elsewhere from the eve of the election through election day, leaving at least three people dead and more than a dozen injured. In some areas, pre-marked ballots were seized and had to be reprinted. Cotabato City was placed under the direct control of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), but voting across BARMM as a whole proceeded largely peacefully.

　In unofficial partial tallies, the Bangsamoro Federal Party (BFP), led by incumbent interim Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua, was locked in a close race with the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), which grew out of the MILF, over party-list votes. With roughly 84% of votes counted, BFP had approximately 560,000 votes to UBJP’s approximately 510,000, putting BFP slightly ahead. The BARMM Grand Coalition (BGC) also drew about 330,000 votes, making it more likely that several parties will form a coalition after the election than that any single party will secure an outright majority in parliament.

　In the run-up to this historic election, the Japanese government has quietly played an important supporting role. Rather than dispatching armed forces as in a United Nations peacekeeping operation, Japan has backed the peace process through the dispatch of civilian personnel to international monitoring teams, indirect support for peace negotiations, and the development of roads, schools, clinics, and water-supply facilities, as well as agricultural and human-resource development.

　In particular, through the Japan-Bangsamoro Initiative for Reconstruction and Development (J-BIRD), launched in 2006, Japan has continued projects — via the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and others — aimed at letting communities worn down by conflict actually feel the benefits of peace. Rather than imposing security by force of arms, this is Japan’s own brand of “unarmed peacekeeping”: preventing the recurrence of conflict by improving residents’ livelihoods and building trust in local administration.

　BARMM was established in 2019, built on the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro between the Philippine government and the MILF. It carries real significance that people who once led an armed movement have laid down their weapons, formed political parties, and now submit themselves to the judgment of voters. At the same time, the disarmament of MILF combatants remains incomplete, and concerns persist that old-style local politics — rivalries and vote-buying among political clans, and the poaching of legislators — could find their way into the new parliament.

　This election is not the completion of peace but the true beginning of self-governance. Whether BFP and UBJP can build a stable coalition while checking each other, rather than either side monopolizing power, and whether the Bangsamoro people themselves can safeguard — through elections and parliament — the peace that Japan has supported for some twenty years, is the question that now must be answered.

The relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko has been the single biggest flashpoint in postwar Japan’s security policy and in the debate over Okinawa’s burden of hosting U.S. military bases. With the victory of a pro-relocation candidate in the recent gubernatorial election, the last obstacles to the Henoko relocation have now been all but cleared away.

Opposition to this plan — rooted in concerns over environmental destruction and the permanent entrenchment of a base — has remained persistent. Yet weighing the practical realities and security necessities in the round leads to a single conclusion: relocation to Henoko is, in fact, the most realistic and best available option for eliminating the dangers posed by Futenma.

First, there is a practical rebuttal to the “relocate outside the prefecture, or outside Japan altogether” argument. Opponents criticize the concentration of bases within Okinawa and call for another prefecture to take one on — yet when the government previously sought an alternative site under the banner of “at minimum, outside the prefecture,” not a single local government anywhere in Japan came forward to accept it. As things stand, with no municipality anywhere shouldering any share of the national defense burden, to simply keep insisting on relocation “outside the prefecture” is, in effect, to accept the permanent entrenchment of Futenma — an airfield sitting in the middle of a residential area and reputed to be the most dangerous in the world — and to leave the danger to the lives and safety of the surrounding residents unaddressed indefinitely. Since no other prefecture is willing to step forward, then, selecting an alternative site within Okinawa itself is an unavoidable choice if the real danger is to be removed.

Second, there is the matter of local residents’ consent and democratic process. Opposition to the Henoko relocation is often framed as an Okinawa-wide movement, yet residents of the immediate Henoko area itself — the three Kubi districts — have, at the very least, shown a willingness to accept and even welcome the plan, with an eye toward revitalizing the local economy, overcoming depopulation, and securing infrastructure investment as part of a broader development package. The local Nago Fisheries Cooperative, too, has accepted the landfill work in exchange for compensation — a practical choice by local residents prioritizing “economic benefit,” not unlike the choices made by communities elsewhere in Japan that have hosted nuclear power plants. To shout opposition while disregarding the direct consent of those most immediately and locally affected carries the contradiction of trampling on the very residents’ right to a livelihood and their own local self-determination that the opposition claims to defend.

Third, there is a rebuttal to concerns over environmental destruction. Criticism of the landfill work in Henoko’s Oura Bay centers on its impact on coral reefs and the dugong, yet Okinawa itself has previously accepted comparable marine development projects for the sake of economic promotion and convenience — the reclamation of the Awase tidal flats and the construction of Naha Airport’s second runway among them. As for the dugong, placing such disproportionate, absolute value on one particular local population, when viewed against its habitat on a global scale, is itself putting the matter backwards — weighing the exceptionally weighty public interest of human life and regional security against a purely localized environmental concern is, at bottom, a case of losing sight of priorities.

Fourth, there is a rebuttal to arguments over the extended construction period, the enormous cost, and the scale of the runways. Henoko’s runways, at roughly 1,800 meters each (two, in a V-shaped configuration), are smaller than Futenma’s roughly 2,700-meter runway — but this is a rational and deliberately restrained specification, consistent with a purely defensive security posture that avoids granting unnecessary long-range strike capability against other countries, and does not pose an excessive threat to neighboring states.

1,800 meters is more than sufficient for operating Ospreys and fighter jets, and nearby infrastructure suitable for larger aircraft already exists in the form of Kadena Air Base and Naha Airport. Moreover, it is simply inconceivable, given Japan’s alliance commitments and national credibility, that the Japanese government would abandon the project on account of soft ground conditions or ballooning costs — and there is no reason Japan’s advanced civil-engineering capability and economic strength should be unable to see it through to completion.

Furthermore, even should U.S. forces someday scale back or withdraw their operations there, the base’s functions could be handed over to Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and put to use in the defense of the Southwestern Islands; alternatively, since a runway of 1,800 meters is a length fully sufficient for the takeoff and landing of medium-sized passenger aircraft, joint civilian use or full civilian conversion is also possible. For these reasons, the national budget invested in the project will by no means go to waste.

In light of all these points, the Henoko relocation plan can be concluded to represent the most realistic, rational, and restrained decision available — and with the victory, in the gubernatorial election held on September 13, of the candidate who accepts the relocation plan, it can be said that the last obstacle to it has now been removed.

Yasotarō Mōri

The End of a Valiant Man

A few minutes before seven o’clock on the morning of December 30, Rizal was led out from Fort Santiago to Bagumbayan Field, the place of execution. He wore a dark suit and a black top hat — clothes newly made for his intended voyage to Cuba, but a fitting color for the occasion of a funeral as well.

With his hands bound behind him, he walked to the execution ground accompanied by priests. “His head was held high and resolute, his spirit calm and composed, and there was even the trace of a smile about his lips,” the record states. Lieutenant Andrade, who had defended him, walked at his side, with a guard of soldiers before and behind. “Rizal’s composure was a thing to marvel at,” one of the priests later recounted.

“So we are walking the road to Calvary,” he said. “Christ was nailed to a cross, but I shall make my own cross of my spine, and be nailed to it by bullets.”

He said this, and then said to the priest,

“What splendid weather it is. Could there be a more tranquil morning than this? You can see Corregidor and the hills of Cavite so clearly. On a morning just like this, I once walked around here with the one dear to my heart.”

So he said. The one dear to his heart was his sweetheart, Leonor. Beyond the fortress walls, the two towers of the Ateneo could be seen rising in the distance — towers that had not yet been built when he himself studied there. He gazed at them with evident fondness, and it was said that only in this one moment did any flicker of emotion cross his brow.

During his years at the Ateneo, he had often walked in this same area with friends, and on one occasion, for reasons known only to himself, he had remarked to a friend, “I cannot shake the feeling that someday, on some fine morning, I shall be shot to death on this very field” — a premonition that, tragically, came true. Both the one who spoke those words and the one who heard them must have been overwhelmed with emotion, recalling that day. The hand of fate moves in mysterious ways.

A vast crowd had gathered at the execution ground. But it was a crowd of two very different kinds. One was made up of Filipinos, who watched in reverent silence and tears as Rizal — whom they looked up to almost as their savior — met his end by firing squad. The other was made up of Spanish officials, friars, and ladies, who had come merely out of idle curiosity to watch the punishment of a disloyal traitor to Spain, laughing and carrying on without a shred of restraint, as though out on some pleasure outing.

When Rizal reached the execution ground, he shook Lieutenant Andrade’s hand firmly, and asked the officer in charge to let him face the firing squad rather than have his back turned to it (to be shot with one’s back to the squad was the manner reserved for traitors to the nation). The officer refused, saying he could not grant this request, as it went against orders. Rizal then said that, if so, there was nothing to be done, but asked instead, “Please do not shoot me in the head — shoot me in the heart,” and this request was granted.

He refused a blindfold, and when the officer told him to kneel, he refused that too, standing upright and facing the sea. The army doctor in attendance asked specifically to check Rizal’s pulse, and found it entirely normal. Bound as he was, Rizal used his fingers to indicate the spot over his heart, telling them, “This is where it is — shoot here.”

The firing squad consisted of eight Filipino soldiers, with Spanish soldiers lined up behind them. The plan was that, should the Filipino soldiers refuse to fire, the Spanish soldiers would shoot them down as well.

The guns rang out with a thunderous crash. One might have expected Rizal to crumple limply to the ground, but instead, by sheer force of a will stronger than iron, he twisted his upper body sharply around and fell to the earth facing the sky. To the very end, he carried through his unbending resolve: that he would never fall face-down upon the ground, but would die looking up at the heavens.

It was three minutes past seven in the morning. Rizal was thirty-five years, six months, and eleven days old. It was not a long life as years go — and yet what a rich, varied, and profoundly meaningful thirty-five years it had been!

Cheers rose up from the crowd of Spaniards, and the military band struck up the Spanish national anthem. The troops marched once around Rizal’s body, as though they were passing in review before this great man. One officer, mindful of the respect owed to the dead, took a handkerchief from Rizal’s pocket and used it to cover his face.

Howard Bray, who witnessed the scene, later recalled: “The shock I felt when Rizal fell, amid the crack of the guns and the jeers of the Spaniards and friars, and that ghastly morning itself, I shall never forget as long as I live. It was one of the most coldblooded crimes recorded in history since the tragedy of Golgotha.”

Another witness, the Englishman Sir Hugh Clifford, contributed an article about Rizal to a British magazine, in which he offered his thoughts on the scene, writing:

“Setting aside for a moment our melancholy reflections on this wretched tragedy, we cannot help but feel a certain grim satisfaction in recalling that, less than eighteen months after this event, the Battle of Manila Bay was fought, and the roar of mightier guns once again rang out over this very field — guns that brought victory to the United States.”

× × ×

Today, at what was once Bagumbayan Field and is now Luneta Park, a towering monument to Rizal stands in majestic solitude. It was built with contributions from the general public, and its designer was the same artist who had earlier designed the national monument to the Swiss patriot William Tell. (Schiller’s poem celebrating William Tell was translated into Tagalog by Rizal himself, and is known among the Filipino people through that translation.)

And so, on the sixteenth anniversary of Rizal’s execution (December 30, 1912), his remains were solemnly interred beneath this monument, which thereby became his tomb as well. Later, around Shōwa 9 (1934), students of the University of the Philippines raised 600 pesos among themselves to erect a marker at the exact spot, some 100 meters from the monument, where Rizal actually fell. (End of “Chapter Six: Toward a Tragic End”)