đź“·Atty. Ali Pangalian Balindong, BARMM Parliament Speaker
FROM being an outlaw, the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has taken its struggle in the political arena by fielding its own bets — under its own political party, for the first Bangsamoro parliamentary elections next year.
According to MILF Central Committee chair Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, there is no way they would allow traditional politicians to call shots on behalf of the Bangsamoro people, even as he expressed apprehension that the Mindanao peace process would take a back seat if they won’t be able to secure enough seats in the parliament.
Citing the urgent need what they have started, Ebrahim who is also the chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said that MILF’s United Bangsamoro Justice Party will be fielding its own candidates in time for the first ever parliamentary election slated next year.
This comes as lawyer Ali Pangalian Balindong in his capacity as speaker of BARMM’s 80-member parliament called on fellow Maranaos to support the entire MILF line up if only to ensure dominance in the BARMM parliament.
Only then, he added, would they be able to sustain the Mindanao peace process initiative, aiming to put full closure to the “Moro issue” hounding the country since the early 1970s.
“We have to continue working for lasting peace and sustainable development in this part of the country,” Balindong, a lawyer and a staunch supporter of the Mindanao peace process, said in an assembly in Malabang, Lanao del Sur.
The UBJP had been registered with the Commission on Elections as a regional political party of the MILF, whose two peace compacts with Malacañang – the 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro and the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro, led to the replacement in 2019 of the then 27-year Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with a more administratively empowered BARMM.
Ebrahim, who is also UBJP president, admits feeling some reservations in the Mindanao peace process if traditional politicians dominate the regional parliament.
“It seems they are not interested in helping solve the Mindanao Moro problem,” Ebrahim lamented.
Officials of the MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front, which has its separate September 2, 1996 peace compact with Malacañang, are together managing a number of agencies in BARMM.
Both fronts are cooperating in pushing forward the BARMM government’s peacebuilding activities, focused on the socio-economic growth of the Moro, non-Moro and indigenous groups in the autonomous region and the promotion of religious, cultural and political solidarity among Mindanao’s culturally pluralistic communities. (ANGEL F. JOSE)
