04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly the Bangsamoros. There is another provision in the MOA-AD that could prove oppressive to the Lumads, and even invite conflicts with Christians. The MOA-AD, in paragraph 4 on Territory, empowers the BJE to establish political subdivisions within the Bangsamoro ancestral domain, as follows: All territorial and geographic areas in Mindanao and its adjacent islands including Palawan and the Sulu archipelago that have been declared recognized, and/or delineated as ancestral domain and ancestral land of the Bangsamoro people as their geographical areas, inclusive of settlements and reservations, may be formed or constituted into political subdivisions of the Bangsamoro territorial jurisdictions subject to the principles of equality of peoples and mutual respect and to the protection of civil, political, economic, and cultural rights in their respective jurisdictions. Thus, the BJE can create political subdivisions -- barangays and municipalities -within the Bangsamoro ancestral domain. Under the MOA-AD, the Bangsamoro ancestral domain includes the ancestral domains of the Lumads. The BJE can create barangays and municipalities in areas that are presently the ancestral domains of the Lumads. The BJE can station its police and internal security force in these areas. Many of these areas -- the present ancestral domains of the Lumads - are located within provinces, cities and municipalities where Christians are the majority. There are obvious possible adverse ramifications of this power of the BJE to create political subdivisions within provinces, cities and municipalities outside of the BJE territory. The creation by the BJE of such political subdivisions will alter the boundaries of the affected provinces, cities and municipalities, an alteration that, under the Constitution, requires an act of Congress and a plebiscite in the affected political units.[76] The Executive branch must conduct widespread consultations not only with the Lumads, but also with the Christians who, under the MOA-AD, will be affected by the creation of such BJE political subdivisions within their provinces, cities and municipalities. Petitions Present Justiciable Controversy The claim of respondents that the MOA-AD, not having been signed but merely initialed, does not give rise to an actual controversy cognizable by the Court, is gravely erroneous. The MOA-AD has two features: (1) as an instrument of cession of territory and sovereignty to a new state, the BJE; and (2) as a treaty with the resulting BJE, governing the associative relationship with the mother state,[77] the Philippines, whose only important role in the relationship is "to take charge of external defense."[78] Justice Vicente V. Mendoza, a former member of this Court and a recognized authority on constitutional law, states: It is indeed true that the BJE is not fully independent or sovereign and indeed it is dependent on the Philippine government for its external defense and only lacks foreign recognition, at least at the present time. Nonetheless it is a state as the Philippines was a state during the elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 101/203