New BARMM tripartite industrial council for transition extension too

COTABATO CITY - A new tripartite industrial peace council has passed a resolution favoring a three-year extension of the tenure of the interim parliament of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The Bangsamoro Tripartite Industrial Peace Council, or BTIPC, will function under the watch of its organizer, the Ministry of Labor and Employment-BARMM.

BARMM Labor Minister Romeo Sema said Wednesday the council was organized only last Monday during a conference in Cotabato City among stakeholders.

“This BTIPC has an important role to play in empowering the industries in the region that are so important to regional economy,” Sema told reporters Wednesday.

Members of the newly-formed council immediately passed a resolution stating the need for an extension for three years of the transition process from the defunct 29-year Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The BARMM replaced ARMM only in February 2019 based on two compacts reached during 22 years of talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front --- the 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro and, subsequently, the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro.

The chairman of the MILF’s central committee, Hadji Ahod Ebrahim, is the current appointed chief minister of BARMM.

Various peace advocacy groups, local executives in BARMM and supporters of Malacañang’s diplomatic overtures with southern Moro communities, have overtly been calling on Congress and the Senate to defer to 2025 the supposed first ever Bangsamoro elections in 2022.

They cited in manifestos calling for an extension until 2025 of the term of the 80-member Bangsamoro Transition Authority, functioning as an interim parliament, the need for the regional government to fully set-up governance facets that can hasten the attainment of peace and development in its five constituent provinces.

“Members of the BTIPC from across the region are so aware of the need for that three year extension,” Sema said.

Copies of the BTIPC’s resolution shall be forwarded to the House of Representatives, the Senate, to Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez, Jr. and to President Rodrigo Duterte, according to Sema.

Only via an act of Congress can the 2022 pioneering elections in BARMM be reset to 2025 on the behest of various groups supporting the government-MILF peace process and popular peace activists, among them Mindanao’s top Catholic Church leader, Cardinal Orlando Quevedo and North Cotabato Gov. Nancy Catamco.

Catamco, a first-termer governor has actively been supporting the efforts of Malacañang to put a diplomatic closure to the nagging now five-decade Moro secessionist uprising despite North Cotabato’s being under Administrative Region 12.