Footnotes

Cotabato City—As noted in last week’s column, more than 30,000 rallyists marched peacefully last Monday, May 18, toward the main road leading to the Bangsamoro Government Center here. But the cries of the huge throng of rallyists, organized through the collaboration of various Bangsamoro civil society groups, fell on deaf ears.

Their speeches and posters carried a common message. It was addressed to the new Interim Chief Minister (ICM), Abdulraof Macacua, who was appointed by President Marcos to replace then ICM Ahod Ebrahim in early March 2025.

Rallyists called on Macacua to defer to the memorandum sent to him by Ebrahim, who is the chair of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), on the removal of Mohagher Iqbal, head of the Ministry of Basic, Higher, and Technical Education (MBHTE). In his memo, Ebrahim underscored the importance of going through a collective process of shura, or consultation, before a drastic decision is made by the highest level of the MILF leadership—its central committee.

Moreover, Ebrahim also noted that the concern for transparency and accountability is inherent in one’s government position. He stressed that his memorandum was not to make Iqbal abscond from his responsibilities and accountability in the issue of allegations of corruption. Ebrahim noted that as ICM, Macacua is given the prerogative to remove any (appointive) official of the regional government. However, in Iqbal’s case, Ebrahim underscored that this prerogative is not Macacua’s alone.

Contrary to what the rallyists wished, Macacua defied Ebrahim’s memo on May 18. In the afternoon of that day, Macacua barged into the MBHTE, declaring himself the new minister of education in the absence of Iqbal and without a proper turnover of crucial office documents.

As chair of the MILF peace negotiating panel throughout the long and excruciating negotiations with the Philippine government, Iqbal played a central role in building the foundations of the peace process architecture that has paved the way for the creation of both structure and framework in how the regional government is being run.

Stating these facts is not an exoneration of Iqbal’s actions, whether these will be proven in a formal investigation.

As a fledgling region, with leadership coming from the hierarchy of the MILF as stipulated in the peace agreement and in the Bangsamoro Organic Law, the BARMM is quite fragile, with its rough edges sticking out through its six years of operations.

The MILF leadership was given the privilege of leading this fragile transition, without even a strong handholding from the national government. It was like a baby being left to fend on its own by its mother, the national government.

Now that the baby is starting to assert its strength as a regularizing bureaucracy, not without faults, mind you, the mother suddenly wants to tinker with the infant it has left to find means to survive.

As a creation of a peace process, the BARMM also has to deal with structures that lend themselves easily to being fractured by adroit moves of scheming interlocutors. The systems in the region are still being nurtured toward maturity. This explains the active presence of several international donor agencies to support the region’s journey toward stabilizing its systems, processes, and procedures.

After Iqbal’s unceremonious removal from office, recent moves surfaced from an already weakened MILF presence in the interim Parliament. Bills were passed to dilute the anti-political dynasty provisions in two already approved BARMM codes—the Bangsamoro Electoral Code and the Bangsamoro Local Government Code. Members of Parliament who authored and co-authored these anti-political dynasty-diluting bills were immediately bashed on social media. It was an obvious move to veer away from one of the huge political problems facing the region, and many parts of the country—the entrenchment of fat and deep political dynasties that extend vertically and horizontally. Problems of corruption and the lack of effective checks and balances because of interlocking management by ruling political families have stifled the political maturity of the country, making politicians rich while driving impoverished constituents to abject levels of intergenerational poverty.

See Also

‘Salubsob’

Will BARMM mirror national political dynamics after the September parliamentary elections?

Given the drift of many confusing and misleading narratives proliferating in the region, we might be seeing a BARMM that mirrors national political dynamics—dominated by traditional political families.

When this happens, it will completely obliterate the gains of the peace process and disregard the bonds of blood, sweat, and tears that marked the Bangsamoro struggle for self-determination.

BARMM will no longer be a unique region, except for the foundational part of its brief history.

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