Motorcade highlights support for BOL ratification

COTABATO CITY -- Thousands of vehicles on Sunday motored through two cities and three provinces in a 16-hour motorcade meant to highlight public support for the Bangsamoro Organic Law.The Commission on Elections will administer on January 21 a plebiscite that would seal the fate of the BOL, or the Republic Act 11054, a product of 22 years of talks between Malacañang and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.The caravan for peace, organized by various blocs helping push the peace process between the government and the MILF forward, was launched here after dawn Sunday.The motorcade crossed through Tacurong City and in towns in Sultan Kudarat, in North Cotabato and in Maguindanao provinces before returning to its point of origin.The motorists were comprised of central Mindanao’s Muslim, Christian and Lumad residents, or the tri-people in southern regions, the primary stakeholders to the current joint government-MILF peace efforts.Senior police and Army officials in central Mindanao, among them Colonel Markton Abo, civil-military relations officer of the Army’s 6thInfantry Division, placed at no fewer than 20,000 their estimate of the number of cars, sports utility vehicles, cargo trucks and motorcycles in the caravan. Our division commander, Major General Cirilito Sobejana, is happy that no untoward incident disrupted the activity. There were no reports of accidents either, Abo said Monday.Thousands of residents, among them pupils of elementary schools and high school students positioned along the highway, greeted the motorists with streamers and flaglets bearing messages of support for BOL.The Commission on Elections will administer the BOL plebiscite in the 118 towns in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, in parts of Lanao del Norte and North Cotabato provinces and in the cities of Cotabato and Isabela, to determine if voters there are amenable to being grouped together under an MILF-led Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or BARMM.Once ratified via a plebiscite, the BOL shall pave the way for ARMM’s replacement with a BARMM, based on two peace compacts between the government and the MILF --- the 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro and, subsequently, the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro.Peace talks between the government and the MILF started on January 7, 1997 and spanned through the terms of four presidents, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and Benigno Aquino III.