Bangsamoro: coalition ready to challenge MILF ahead of 2025 vote
The deputy governor of Lanao del Sur, who chairs the SIAP, is behind the new alliance, whose aim is to represent and meet voters’ demands. President Marcos warns that he will not tolerate any attempt to obstruct or stop the upcoming election after officials with the Transition Authority linked to the MILF had asked for another postponement of three years.
Manila (AsiaNews) – A coalition of three important parties - linked to local governors – is ready to challenge the hegemony of Bangsamoro’s ruling Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in next year’s regional elections to provide a greater voice for local populations.
Lanao del Sur Deputy Governor Mohammad Khalid Raki-in Adiong, president of the Serbisyong Inklusibo-Alyansang Progresibo Party (SIAP), has reached an agreement with two other regional parties to form a coalition, namely the Al-Ittihad-UKB party and the Bangsamoro People's Party.
The coalition’s goal is to elect members to the future parliament of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), and to this end, it is taking its first steps and seems to benefit from broad support, heading into a head-on clash with the ruling party, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP).
The latter is affiliated with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which negotiated a peace deal with the central government after decades of pursuing a separatist and radical (Islamic) struggle in Asia’s only Catholic-majority country.
The agreement that settled the issue at the time was defined as "historic" even by the Philippine bishops.
“The coalition will come up with a list of nominees for the BARMM parliament in 2025,” Adiong said during SIAP’s general assembly in Marawi City on Sunday.
Under established rules, the autonomous region's parliament will have no less than 80 members with a speaker. Half of the seats (40) will be elected via proportional representation with candidates running for political parties. The other 40 seats will be decided in 32 single-member districts with the remaining eight reserved for sectoral representation.
The SIAP general assembly was a real show of strength, thanks to the participation of Sulu Governor Sakur Tan, leader of the Salam Party; Bangsamoro Peoples Party Chairman Mujiv Hataman, who represents Basilan; and Maguindanao del Sur Governor Mariam Magundadatu, leader of the Al-Ittihad-UKB party.
A former Bangsamoro Interior Minister Naguib Sinarimbo, who is the current local government minister, also joined SIAP, saying that coalition candidates have a better understanding of the problems of the population than current representatives.
Many parliamentary officials, in fact, belong to the MILF, once the largest Islamic rebel group in the Philippines and now dominant in the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) that runs the regional government.
“It has become a perennial problem to connect the aspirations of the local governments on the ground with that of the BARMM regional government, which is manned by former rebels. As a result, the delivery of key services was affected,” Sinarimbo said.
Among those following next year's vote in the autonomous region is President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who has threatened tough action against anyone who tries to derail the 2025 election in Bangsamoro.
The president clearly aimed his criticism at some BTA officials, mostly MILF members, who want to postpone the election to 2028 from the current date of 30 June 2025.
Marcos, who had previously said there would be no further extension of the transition period, issued the warning during a visit to Maguindanao del Norte to mark the tenth anniversary of the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro (CAB) between the Philippine government and MILF, signed in 2014 after 17 years of negotiations.
CAB is a “continuing crusade for peace that should not be hinged on the whims or depend on where the political wind is blowing,” Marcos explained.
For the president, the election will be “the fulfilment of your democratic right to realize and achieve meaningful autonomy as enshrined in the CAB,” and so, “Safeguard those rights,” he added.
In February 2019, then-President Rodrigo Duterte named MILF Chairman Al Hajj Murad Ebrahim as the first chief minister of the newly created Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
Since then, the rebels – who for decades fought a brutal war for autonomy, with 150,000 dead since the 1970s – have kept peace and stability in the Muslim-majority territory on the island of Mindanao.
Murad heads the 80-member BTA, which governs the region's five provinces until the Bangsamoro parliament is elected.
BARMM was created after the ratification of the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), the product of negotiations between the central government and MILF.
With two rounds of voting (21 January and 6 February 2019), a referendum decided that the new region would include the provinces of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, as well as the cities of Marawi, Lamitan, Cotabato, and 63 villages of North Cotabato.
However, divisions emerged from the very first start. The decision to choose the MILF, which is dominated by ethnic Maguindanaons, to lead the three-year transition did not go down well with other Islamic ethnic groups, such as the Tausug, who prefer a federal structure, and the Maranao.
Christians too were initially distrustful of the political arrangement, especially as it might impact religious freedom; however, four days before the vote, Mindanao Catholic leaders expressed their support for the autonomist project, calling the BOL "the last concrete opportunity for a just and lasting peace in Mindanao".
(Photo: Presidential Communications Office)
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