Fracturing an already fissured peace process (1)
Cotabato City—For the past few months, many of us who are closely connected with the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) as constituents, social development advisors and workers, and as individuals who have close relatives here, have waited with bated breath about what happens next in this fledgling, still beleaguered region.
We are all on tenterhooks, waiting nervously in strained anticipation of what the next moves will be to drive an even deeper wedge into the already deeply fissured relationships among the region’s top officials.
But perhaps the more important question is asking who is behind these moves—considered part of the old divide et impera (Latin for divide and conquer) playbook that dominant political forces have long established, and still are successful in using it.
We might just be asking a rhetorical question.
The painstaking peace process that started more than two decades ago and concluded in the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) in March 2014 now seems to many to be just the contents of a piece of paper.
Adroit moves by a group of power-hungry and vindictive personalities in the region have held hostage the CAB as an instrument to be defied openly, to the consternation of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The latter has complained that the Philippine government, through the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation, and Unity, has done many things to destroy the MILF’s stronghold in the region.
All members of the regional interim government, especially the members of the Interim Parliament, are appointed by the President of the Philippines and are not accountable to the people, even to the parties in the peace agreement. These people have behaved in ways that do not consider transparency and accountability, since they do not owe their positions to an electoral mandate.
But more damningly, they have accused some top MILF leaders of having been entangled in anomalous financial transactions, which could qualify as plunder under Philippine law.
Backtracking a bit, let us review several moves that worked in confluence with each other toward the weakening of the regional leadership under the MILF.
It was the Supreme Court that delivered the first shockwave to a largely complacent and unprepared regional leadership. On Sept. 9, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that while the Bangsamoro Organic Law is valid, Sulu’s inclusion “was unconstitutional because the province rejected the law in the 2019 plebiscite.”
Sulu’s exit was not just a simple matter as far as the Bangsamoro struggle for self-determination is concerned. The foundational narrative of this struggle started with one of the key personalities in the history of the struggle–Nur Misuari, a Sama-Tausug from Sulu who, together with other Moro activists at the incipient stage of Ferdinand E Marcos Sr.’s martial law rule, decided to band together to form the Moro National Liberation Front. Sulu is considered a central part of this struggle for Moro self-determination, through the leadership of Misuari and other significant Tausug activists. But in 2024, the Supreme Court decided in favor of the petition filed by former Sulu Gov. Sakur Tan to break away from the BARMM.
This huge challenge in the unity of the 13 Islamized ethnolinguistic groups in the region was followed by moves that started to surface cracks in the leadership of the MILF in the region.
Toward the end of 2024, several news sources, including posts on social media, revealed that some regional functionaries, together with interlocutors closely associated with President Marcos, sought an audience with him. Allegedly, it was to bring to the attention of the national government several “complaints” about the MILF-led BARMM.
During this time, rumors of possible cracks in the MILF leadership continued to float as a favorite topic during gatherings of many social development agencies here. But the MILF repeatedly belied these, claiming that no such fractures were happening.
Then another shockwave came. On March 9, 2025, then Interim Chief Minister (ICM) Ahod “Al Haj Murad” Ebrahim was replaced with the appointment of Abdulraof Macacua, then serving as interim governor of the newly created Maguindanao del Norte province. Macacua took his oath of office as ICM on March 12, 2025.
The timing of the replacement of the regional top leadership was quite suspicious. Questions were also raised on the choice of a replacement for the ICM position. Was there no other qualified person within the MILF ranks who could ably run an interim regional government within the next seven months before the region will have its regular elections?
(To be continued next week.)
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