Discordant notes in the BARMM (1)
Cotabato City—If the fledgling Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) were a musical, it would have been one with several pieces that are either off-tone or off-key. Its conductor would have serious problems with whether the players are not playing the same harmonious notes as the others would need to be replaced. Or it could be that the discordant notes are the result of defective instruments that need either fine-tuning or outright replacement.
A region’s wide range of diversity, from its cultural traditions, political orientations, and overall perspectives of what governance is all about—can be a cause of discord. Differences of opinion, even on trivial matters, can lead to serious disagreement, and, eventually to the breaking up of relationships.
In an orchestra, under the adept harmonization of tunes and notes by a skillful conductor, every instrument and the players of each can follow the conductor’s direction, all for coming up with a beautiful and soothing harmonious melody. This needs constant practice together, not individually, but with all the players, so no one will go off-key or violate the rules of playing symphony music. One of them is the collaborative effort of all players, however small their roles are in the entire musical production. Each player needs to know when and at what point in the musical their role is needed, and when they can play subtly as background music for the solo instrumental players. No one tries to upstage the others, since this might lead to confusion on the part of the other players, making the musical a horrifying audiovisual event. And no conductor would like this to happen.
When the BARMM was composed, it had to deal with a wide range of various actors and players who all hold claims to being part of the group that engaged in long and tedious peace negotiations with the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). By signing the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), both the Philippine government and the MILF agreed on certain terms to organize a new government out of the former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
One of these terms was for the MILF as the key political actor in the new autonomous region, thereby making it the government of the day.
The CAB led to the approval of the Bangsamoro organic law, which paved the way for the creation of the framework for a new autonomous region—the BARMM.
As many in the MILF leadership were total rookies in the art of governing a huge political bureaucracy, they were supposed to be handheld by the institution that gave birth to it—the national government. Since it was the national government that gave birth to the BARMM and its legal framework, it was duty-bound to handhold this new autonomous government until such time it was ready to stand on its own feet and make and craft decisions that would align with the goals of self-determination, self-governance, and overall concern about uplifting the lives of the Bangsamoro constituents—Muslim, Christian, and more importantly, its significant number of non-Moro indigenous peoples (IPs) in different provinces of the new region.
But because they were not handheld, the rookie political leaders had to rely on their own resources, many of whom relied on their more than four decades of experience as hardy revolutionaries. They were quite overwhelmed at the very beginning, but in due time, they were able to get the groove, so to speak, and even flaunted a concept of governance they thought was apt for them as Muslim leaders—the concept of moral governance.
Until this time, however, this concept has remained part of the government of the day’s articulation of what they consider an ideal for running a bureaucracy. But they still need to translate it to operational, implementable guidelines to demonstrate how this works in running a complicated bureaucracy like the BARMM.
Perhaps one of the sources of discordant notes in the region is the weak alignment of what one ministry, office, or agency in the region does, and to try to work collaboratively and not in isolation for each other. Minister attorney Sha Elijah Dumama-Alba of the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government and concurrent majority floor leader in the interim Parliament—the Bangsamoro Transition Authority—articulated this need to collaborate with each other (referring to how all the ministries, offices, and agencies in the region work). “At this time of the regional development, collaboration is no longer an option, it is an imperative,” Dumama-Alba stressed during her welcome remarks on the launching of the devolution arrangements as spelled out in the newly approved Bangsamoro Local Governance Code last Feb. 26, 2025.
(To be continued)
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