04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly treaty). In the case of a multilateral treaty not signed in time, a state can still validly declare its consent to be bound by submitting an instrument of accession.[24] This discussion is confirmatory that initialing is generally not the act by which an international agreement is signed, but a preliminary step that confirms the authenticity of the agreed-upon text of the agreement. The initialing of the agreement reflects only the affirmation by the negotiating agents that the text of the prospective agreement is authentic. It is plausible for the negotiating agents to have initialed the agreement but for the principal to later repudiate the same before signing the agreement. Article 12(2)(a) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties does provide that "the initialing of a text constitutes a signature of the treaty when it is established that the negotiating States so agreed." At bar, it is evident that there had been no agreement that the mere initialing of the MOA-AD would constitute the signing of the agreement. In fact, it was explicitly provided in the MOA-AD that the signing of the agreement would take place on a date different from that when the document was initialed. Further, a formal signing ceremony independent of the initialing procedure was scheduled by the parties. The fact that the MOA-AD reflects an initialing process which is independent of the affixation of signatures, which was to be accomplished on a specific date which was days after the MOA-AD was initialed, plainly indicates that the parties did not intend to legally bind the parties to the MOA through initialing. There is no cause under international law to assume that the MOA-AD, because it had been initialed, was already signed by the Philippine Government or the MILF even. III. The position of the MILF that the MOA-AD already creates binding obligations imposable on the Government cannot ultimately be sustained, even assuming that the initialing of the document had such binding effect. That position of the MILF supposes that the provisions of the MOA-AD are intrinsically valid under Philippine law. It takes no inquiry at great depth to be enlightened that the MOA-AD is incongruous with the Philippine Constitution. The Constitution establishes a framework for the administration of government through political subdivisions. The territorial and political subdivisions of the Republic of the Philippines are the provinces, cities, municipalities, and barangays.[25] In addition, there shall be autonomous regions in Muslim Mindanao and the Cordilleras, in accordance with respective organic acts enacted by Congress.[26] The Constitution has adopted decentralization as a governing principle with respect to local government rule, and this especially holds true with respect to the autonomous regions. As we explained in Disomangcop v. DPWH:[27] Regional autonomy is the degree of self-determination exercised by the local government unit vis-à-vis the central government. In international law, the right to self-determination need not be understood as a right to political separation, but rather as a complex net of legal-political relations between a certain people and the state elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 146/203