The Bangsamoro dilemma

If you were to ask Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, who’d been one of the republic’s peace negotiators, the current administration, when it comes to the Bangsamoro, “is a crawling snail clinging to a shaky branch undecided whether it should take action or stay still.” She believes that President Marcos, when he was still a senator, wasn’t keen on the peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), but that he’s come to see its benefits. But the peace process was not top of mind for him. He was content to delegate matters to two officials, then Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation, and Unity Carlitos Galvez Jr. and Special Assistant to the President Antonio Lagdameo Jr.

In this “two-headed government structure,” Coronel believes Lagdameo got the upper hand, but when trouble emerged, it was Galvez who was axed. She believes that despite the appointment of Mel Senen Sarmiento as the new presidential peace adviser, Lagdameo retains the upper hand.

So what are the problems, exactly? Just Security’s summary was that “in March 2025, the government unilaterally announced it was replacing the BARMM’s interim chief minister, longtime MILF Chairman Murad Ebrahim (known as Murad), who had been in office since the BARMM’s inception in 2019, with Abdulraof Macacua, who had been Murad’s successor as the MILF’s military chief and served in a number of official roles during the transition. Murad and some of the senior leaders around him were reportedly seen as less willing than Macacua to reach an accommodation with the traditional clan politicians that Marcos’s advisors had been trying to lure into an alliance with the MILF.”

In the news, mention was made of proposals to drop political dynasty restrictions, which, of course, were obnoxious from the point of view of traditional Moro ruling families (with whom groups like the MILF had little patience, historically).

So the administration ditched the Murad leadership of the MILF (with whom the government had negotiated the agreement for the Bangsamoro). It helped create the Bangsamoro equivalent of the ruling Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, the Bangsamoro Federalist Party, which poached the membership of MILF’s United Bangsamoro Justice Party. Business as usual is coming back, and it’s more in harmony with traditional politics as practiced by both Muslims and Christians.

Its new partners are also less particular and thus less insistent about government commitments for both the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) and the Bangsamoro Organic Law. There is a process of normalization stipulated in the CAB, and the current authority, the Bangsamoro Transition Authority in the BARMM.

Elections scheduled for March 30 were postponed to Sept. 14 this year, just the latest in a series of postponements dating back to their being first moved from 2019 to 2022, then twice in 2025, and from March to September this year (for many reasons, ranging from delays in drawing up the rules then constituencies, including a Supreme Court decision on territory).

Essentially, the concern is that what was a bold path forward is becoming all-too-familiar, which may be cozy not just with Manila but, arguably, the rest of Mindanao.

Mindanao historian Patricio Abinales ruffled feathers when he demonstrated that the belief that there have been centuries of unified Moro resistance against the Spanish, the Americans, and then, Filipinos, is a myth: the idea of a “Bangsamoro” is new, dating back to the 70s, and with it, the idea that Moros are a cohesive group and should act as such.

Instead, the history of the region is of various ethnolinguistic groups waging their own campaigns, ranging, depending on circumstances, from collaboration, coexistence, alliance, and yes, resistance, at times alternating from one extreme to another. The Moro National Liberation Front and MILF were creations of Moros who had turned their educational opportunities outside their home regions into a new ideology that transcended ethnic identities and called into question the power and influence of the traditional ruling families.

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With the rise, however, of a Mindanawon identity, which, as Abinales points out, has a pan-Mindanao attitude that no longer sees religion or ethnicity as barriers to solidarity, could the idea of a Bangsamoro become obsolete, practically at the moment it is reaching political fruition?

Decades of conflict have created a Moro diaspora but also a level of integration unimaginable mere decades ago. Thirty years ago, someone in Cebu reminded me that 10 percent of their population was Moro—a result of Moros fleeing conflict. When the late Max Soliven tried to paint a dark picture of the “Moro peril” in Greenhills, people not only laughed but also angrily rejected his warmongering. Talk about the Philippine state? Consider an unintended consequence of the destruction of Marawi: the large, noticeable influx of Moros in the Bureau of Internal Revenue, supposedly on the assumption that they are less liable to be corrupted. Perhaps something similar accounts for the visibility of Moros in the Board of Investments.

Without internal divisions, what room is there for external players to cause mischief in Mindanao? Put another way, without conflict as an excuse for national governments to hide behind, what would be the consequences of pan-Mindanao demands for accountability, regardless of religion or ethnic affiliations?

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Email: [email protected]; Twitter: @mlq3