First Parliamentary Elections in Bangsamoro Mark Pivotal Step Toward Peace and Self-Governance

MANILA, Philippines — Voters in the autonomous southern Philippine region of Bangsamoro will head to the polls Monday for the territory’s first parliamentary elections, widely regarded as a critical milestone on the path to self-determination and enduring peace after decades of insurgency and violence.

The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) encompasses five provinces, three cities and 63 villages across eight special geographic area clusters, with nearly 2.4 million eligible voters. Election officials are targeting an 80% turnout after polling was delayed for several years.

A total of 80 seats are at stake in the elections, which will determine the composition of the region’s legislative body. These include 40 political party representatives, 32 district representatives and eight sectoral representatives.

Unlike the direct voting system used under the national government’s presidential structure, the region’s chief minister — who leads the executive branch — is not directly elected by voters. Members of parliament will select the chief minister from among themselves by majority vote during their first parliamentary session.

Voters will choose one regional party, one district representative and six sectoral representatives. The 40 regional party-representative seats will be allocated to nominees based on each party’s share of the vote.

Centuries of colonial rule by Spain, the United States and Filipino Christian settlers reduced Muslims to a minority in resource-rich Mindanao, the southern third of the Philippine archipelago from which BARMM was carved. The region has endured decades of intermittent but bloody conflicts over land, resources and political power.

Since the 1970s, approximately 150,000 combatants and civilians have been killed in the southern Philippines, while development remained stunted in the country’s poorest region. Western and Asian governments long feared that the persistent insurgencies could foster Islamic extremism across Southeast Asia.

The presence of private armies and long-running clan conflicts has further compounded the region’s volatile security environment.

A 2014 peace agreement brokered by Malaysia saw the largest Muslim rebel group — the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) — abandon its pursuit of a separate Muslim state in exchange for expanded autonomy within the largely Catholic nation. The group’s estimated 40,000 fighters were to be demobilized and provided with livelihoods and support to reintegrate into civilian life.

The Bangsamoro region was created under the peace deal to replace a smaller, poverty-stricken five-province autonomous area with a larger, better-funded and more empowered territory. It has been governed by former guerrilla leaders during a transition period that concludes with the first regular elections on Sept. 14.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front suspended the disarming of its remaining 14,000 fighters last year, citing the government’s failure to fully honor socio-economic commitments made under the 2014 deal. At the time, then-presidential assistant David Diciano, who had been overseeing the transformation of the Bangsamoro region, stated that the MILF’s central committee had decided “to postpone the decommissioning of 14,000 of its combatants and 2,450 of their weapons.”

The Institute for Autonomy and Governance, a nonprofit policy and research center based in the region, has warned that the incomplete decommissioning of MILF combatants, combined with the group’s split into two rival political parties competing in the elections, poses a potential risk of violence that could undermine voter confidence.

More than 20,000 military and police personnel are being deployed to secure the elections, officials said.

“We have just one goal: for them to be able to vote. All our preparations and efforts would be in vain if our fellow citizens couldn’t vote,” said Commission on Elections Chairman Erwin Garcia.

Michael Henry Yusingco, a senior research fellow at the Ateneo Policy Center, wrote in an article published by the online portal Access Bangsamoro: “Without a party ethos rooted in collective responsibility, mutual respect and an orientation toward the common good, parliaments risk devolving into arenas of personal rivalries, factional disputes or transactional politics.”

He said the present moment is an opportone for regional parties to demonstrate such party ethos in order to sustain parliamentary democracy.

“Clearly, the BARMM’s history of clan politics, electoral violence and patronage-based loyalties presents formidable challenges.”

Source link