ARMM execs pledge support to expanded Bangsamoro Transition Commission

DAVAO CITY (Feb25) --- Officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao want Malacañang and the Moro fronts to replace ARMM with a more empowered outfit before their terms end on June 30, 2019.Gov. Mujiv Hataman, now in his second term as ARMM’s chief executive, on Saturday said he had urged members of the expanded Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC), launched here Friday, to establish before the 2019 elections an entity to replace the present autonomous regional government. If established amid our elective tenure, we shall willingly step down and turn over to them the ARMM government for the new self-governing political mechanism to take off unhampered, Hataman said.President Rodrigo Duterte and Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza led Friday’s symbolic launching of the expanded BTC. The event was held at Davao City’s seaside Insular Waterfront Hotel, attended by leaders of various sectors in the autonomous region, including people from the Islamic, Lumad and Christian religious communities.The expanded BTC will craft a new enabling law for the setting up of a more empowered self-governing political entity as agreed by the national government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).The new BTC, chaired by MILF’s first vice chairman, Ghazali Jaafar, is comprised of 21 members.Besides Jaafar, the MILF has 10 members in the group, where the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the government have three and seven representatives each, respectively.The three MNLF officials in the expanded BTC, lawyers Omar Sema and Firdausi Abas and former ARMM Assemblyman Hatimil Hassan, belong to a group not hostile to the MILF.A smaller MNLF faction led by Nur Misuari is rabidly opposed to any convergence with the MILF in pushing the Mindanao peace process forward.The original BTC only had 15 members, seven from the government and eight from the MILF, including its chairman, Muhaquer Iqbal.The enabling measure it crafted, during the time of President Benigno Aquino III, to create an MILF-led Bangsamoro political entity, the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law, was disapproved by Congress for containing unconstitutional provisions.Hataman said they have built more than a thousand kilometers of arterial networks, seaports and hundreds of what engineers call vertical and horizontal infrastructures in all of ARMM's five provinces in the past four years in support of the government and MILF’s joint peace overture. These projects shall be turned over to the new government set-up which Malacañang, the MILF and the MNLF may soon create. We are hoping it can be established before June 30, 2019, Hataman said.Hataman said he want voters in areas to be covered by the new political entity replacing ARMM to elect a pioneer set of officials via an electoral process simultaneous with the 2019 local and senatorial polls. Even if we are already out of the picture, we shall continue to help make the Mindanao peace process succeed, Hataman said.ARMM’s vice governor, Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, said he is as ready to vacate his post before June 30, 2019 if required by the BTC and Malacañang. This peace process is good for all people in Mindanao, the Muslims, the Christians and the Lumads. We are ready to do sacrifice, Lucman said.Lucman said he belongs to a large Maranaw clan supportive of the Moro cause. My late dad, the erstwhile congressman of Lanao del Sur, Rashid Lucman, became a bitter enemy of Malacañang in the 1970s for his being `pro-Moro,’ for supporting the Moro uprising then, Lucman said.Lucman said the animosity between his father and President Ferdinand Marcos forced their family to seek political asylum for about a decade in Saudi Arabia. Peace talks between the government and the MILF started on January 7, 1997. oth sides had crafted a final compact, the March 27, 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro, which aims to replace ARMM with a more politically and administratively-empowered Moro-led regional government.The MNLF, on the other hand, signed a peace agreement with Malacañang on September 2, 1996, but is not contented with how past presidents complied with some of its sensitive provisions.