The continuation of programs related to the peace overture of Malacañang and southern communities is one of the objectives of the political party of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, to pit candidates during the first ever Bangsamoro parliamentary elections next year.
Senior officials of the MILF’s United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP) told reporters on Saturday that they had the chance of reiterating anew their political goals to thousands of supporters during an assembly in Malabang, Lanao del Sur last Wednesday, July 17, 2024.
The chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, who is a Maguindanaon, and the Maranao speaker of BARMM’s 80-member parliament, Ali Pangalian Balindong, together led the gathering of UBJP members from different towns in Lanao del Sur, held at a large gymnasium in the town proper of Malabang in the second district of the province.
Balindong said on Saturday that they have explained to UBJP members and supporters present in the event that only by the party’s dominance in the BARMM parliament can stakeholders to the Mindanao peace process sustain such 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.
The UBJP had been registered with the Commission on Elections as 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 and politically empowered BARMM.
Ebrahim, UBJP’s president and also chairman of the MILF’s central committee, said they are apprehensive of a “backlash” in the Mindanao peace process if traditional politicians dominate the regional parliament.
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 ministries in BARMM and are cooperating in pushing forward the regional government’s peacebuilding activities, partly focused on the socio-economic growth of the Moro, non-Moro and indigenous communities in the autonomous region.
Photo show Ebrahim and Balindong in a huddle after the UBJP’s activity in Malabang last Wednesday. (JFU, JULY 20, 2024)
