Quo vadis, BARMM? (1)

Cotabato City—Now that the first regular parliamentary elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) have been concluded, everyone waits with bated breath for what happens in its aftermath.

The entire regional autonomous governance infrastructure was designed to be asymmetrical to the unitary, presidential form of government that we have at the national level.

It is an “experiment,” said Department of the Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla in one of his recent visits to the region a few weeks before the anticipated first parliamentary elections. But his idea of an experiment is to find out if a predominantly Christian country can live with a predominantly Muslim region—the BARMM. This view is quite inane; Christians and Muslims have resided in different localities in the region for quite some time, and there have been some serious conflicts that were driven more by national policies under the administration of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr., the father of the present President. Among the most critical of these “national policies” were Marcos Sr.’s draconian rules during martial law, which he proclaimed in September 1972.

But perhaps the real “experiment” is for the BARMM to demonstrate that a parliamentary system of government will become a template for more meaningful and responsive governance. It is an experiment for something akin to “building back better”—an opportunity to rectify national policies that sidelined a people of distinctive identity (the Moro or Bangsamoro) and to address various grievances that resulted from having a distinctive identity. Among these are historical injustices against them, especially during Marcos Sr.’s martial law, that made thousands of Bangsamoro and Indigenous peoples in the region victims of massive human rights violations and marginalization through land dispossession.

The Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) or Republic Act No. 11054 is the legal framework that created the BARMM. The BOL legally articulates the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) signed by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Philippine government during the presidency of Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III. It was ratified in January 2019 by a majority of voters in the region. Under the BOL, a new interim Parliament was formed with the leadership of the MILF-appointed key leaders in the fledgling autonomous region. This is the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA), the regional interim Parliament.

Being asymmetrical with the unitary framework of the national government, the BARMM’s BTA performed both legislative and executive functions as the main attribute of a parliamentary form of government.

While this arrangement was the main part of the BOL, it also presented a humongous challenge to the newly appointed members of the BTA, many of whom also performed ministerial functions as heads of various key ministries, agencies and offices in the new iteration of an autonomous government in the region.

As former rebel leaders and commanders, the erstwhile majority members of the first BTA were more experienced in running a protracted war against the forces of the Philippine government rather than in managing government units and institutions. They had to go through a rough learning-by-doing pathway, expectedly dealing with huge stumbling blocks and hurdles that also slowed them down in a way, especially in terms of being able to make quick and judicious decisions in running a complicated and massive government bureaucracy.

The transition government in the BARMM was also expected to pass seven key regional priority laws that would pave the way for a smooth transition to a regular parliamentary government after the first three years. Originally, under the CAB, the exit agreement between the Philippine government and the MILF was to be signed in 2022, assuming that all provisions in the agreement would have been implemented by the signing parties. The BTA was expected to pass seven priority codes by that year.

But in 2022, under former President Rodrigo Duterte (who assumed the presidency in 2016), no exit agreement was signed. Several key provisions in the CAB, especially those on the Joint Normalization Annex that included the creation of a National Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Board, were still on the back burner, so to speak.

The MILF-led BARMM requested an extension of the transition from Duterte, setting the indicative dates for the first Bangsamoro regular parliamentary elections, first in March of 2025, and then, following another postponement, in October 2025. Once again, no elections took place in both March and October. The extension was justified as necessary since only six of the seven priority codes required in the BOL were passed into a regional autonomy law or act within that period.

(To be continued.)

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