Lamitan LGU wants extension of ARMM-to-BARMM transition period

COTABATO CITY --- Lamitan City has joined the bandwagon of communities seeking extension until 2025 of the transition from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to the infant Bangsamoro regional government.

Lamitan City Vice Mayor Roderick Furigay personally delivered Tuesday to Chief Minister Ahod Ebrahim of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao a letter from their mayor stating their LGU’s support for the bid of BARMM officials for an extension of the transition process to 2025, supposedly only up to 2022.

Copies of the letter, signed January 24 by Lamitan City Mayor Rose Furigay, were also distributed by the vice mayor and senior LGU officials to Muhaquer Iqbal, Naguib Sinarimbo and Eduard Guerra, BARMM’s education, local government and public works ministers, respectively.

“We in Lamitan City believe that sufficient time is needed for the BTA (Bangsamoro Transition Authority) to lay down the foundation for the institutionalization of just and lasting peace and to maintain the momentum in achieving economic growth in the Bangsamoro,” Furigay’s letter to Ebrahim stated.

Vice Mayor Furigay told Ebrahim during their meeting in the BARMM Capitol Tuesday morning that Lamitan City’s Sangguniang Panglungsod shall pass a resolution this week urging the national government to grant the wish of BARMM residents to extend the period of transition from the defunct ARMM to the now 25-month Bangsamoro self-governing entity.

A copy of the letter from the office of Mayor Furigay, now in her third term as chief executive of Lamitan City covering 45 barangays shall also be forwarded to Presidential Peace Process Adviser Carlito Galvez, Jr.

Muslim and Christian residents of Lamitan City voted in favor of the ratification of the charter of BARMM, the Republic Act 11054, during a plebiscite administered in the ARMM by the Commission on Elections in January 2019.

Lamitan City now has more than 60,000 registered voters.

Ebrahim, Iqbal, Sinarimbo and Guerra separately told reporters Tuesday they were elated with the gesture of the Lamitan City LGU.

“This augurs well to efforts of the Bangsamoro government to spread throughout the region an inclusive and enduring peace,” Ebrahim said.

Various sectors in BARMM had earlier drafted manifestos expressing support to the bid of regional officials and members of the Bangsamoro parliament for an extension of the transition process to 2025.

An extension would mean deferment until 2025 of BARMM’s supposed first regional elections next year.

Various Sectors, cause-oriented groups and peace advocates, among them Mindanao’s top Catholic Church leader, Cardinal Orlando Quevedo, had said the newly-created BARMM government needs enough time to organize its governing facets essential to the delivery of services to residents of the region.

The creation in 2019 of BARMM that replaced ARMM is a product of 22 years of peace talks between the national government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, whose central committee is led by Ebrahim.

Ebrahim, the pioneering BARMM chief minister, sits as figurehead of the region’s 80 parliament members comprising the BTA.