Bangsamoro chief retains 6 regional Cabinet officials
COTABATO CITY—Barely two weeks after he ordered all his Cabinet officials, their deputy chiefs and heads of office to resign as part of the Bangsamoro bureaucracy’s cleansing process, Interim Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua announced he would retain six of these top officials.
Macacua announced on Saturday that he declined to accept the “unqualified” resignation of Ministers Akmad Brahim of the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Energy (Menre), Ubaida Pacasem of the Ministry of Finance, Budget and Management (MFBM), Dr. Kadil Sinolinding Jr. of the Ministry of Health, Muslimin Sema of the Ministry of Labor and Employment, lawyer Raissa Jajurie of the Ministry of Social Services and Development and acting Minister Jehan A. Usop of the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Brahim, who used to serve as Macacua’s deputy at the Menre of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), was appointed to the post by former Interim Chief Ahod Ebrahim, whom Macacua replaced in March.
Pacasem, a Bangsamoro Member of Parliament (MP) since 2019, assumed the MFBM post in March 2022; while Sinolinding, an opthalmologist who also served as health secretary of the defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and currently an MP, was appointed to the post in 2022.
Sema, chair of a faction of the Moro National Liberation Front, was appointed to his post by Ebrahim in 2019 and reappointed in 2022. Jajurie, a Moro lawyer who served as legal consultant of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) during its peace negotiation with the government, was named minister for social services and development in BARMM in 2019.
Of the six retained Cabinet officials, only Usop, who assumed her post on May 27 this year, was appointed by Macacua.
Standards
Macacua said his decision to accept or deny the resignation of BARMM’s ranking officials was based on their “competence, experience, overall physical fitness and above all, adherence to the moral governance agenda.”
Macacua also directed the rest of the officials to continue performing their limited functions while the Bangsamoro government continued to deliberate on their resignations.
Earlier, on June 23, Macacua directed all heads of office in BARMM to submit unqualified courtesy resignations in the light of serious and grave complaints brought before him.
Macacua said the move aimed to improve the efficiency of the regional government’s service delivery as the end of the transition period neared. BARMM will hold its first parliamentary elections in October this year.
The directive affected more than 40 officials in the entire bureaucracy of the expanded autonomous region.
Complaints
According to Macacua, many of the complaints that reached him involved corruption, six-month delayed salaries of employees and teachers for no valid reason, delayed payment to contractors of government projects, which in turn caused delays in the implementation of major infrastructure projects in the region.
Other complaints included suppliers not being paid on time for no valid reason, incorrect procurement processes and employees being unable to apply for a loan with the Government Service Insurance System due to nonremittance of their contributions and corresponding government counterparts.
After Macacua’s office posted on Facebook his decision to retain the six ranking officials, some netizens asked him to retain Minister Mohagher Iqbal of the Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education, a founding member of the MILF and a key leader in the Bangsamoro; and Minister Elijah Dumama-Alba of the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government.
