Stakeholders glad with the President's focus on progress in BARMM 

KIDAPAWAN CITY - Public officials and peace advocacy blocs in the Bangsamoro region were elated with the reassurance by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. of forging ahead with the southern peace process, aiming to put a diplomatic closure to decades of secessionist strife in the region.

President Marcos had also said, in a keynote address that capped off Tuesday’s start in Davao City of the First Local Legislative General Assembly in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, that he is glad to see former Moro rebel leaders now involved in governance, calling them his partners in public service.

BARMM Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo, whose office has peacebuilding programs in all six provinces and three cities in the Bangsamoro region, told reporters Wednesday that they are grateful to President Marcos for having graced, as the guest of honor, the symbolic kickoff rite for the assembly.

The legislators' assembly is a capacity-building activity meant to enhance the legislative proficiency of BARMM vice mayors, vice governors, and their elected constituent municipal and provincial lawmakers.

“We can’t thank President Marcos enough. To him, we are grateful for attending the opening program of the assembly despite his hectic work schedule. We are glad with his reassurance to help peace and sustainable development spread around BARMM,” Sinarimbo, Bangsamoro regional spokesperson, said.

The office of Sinarimbo and the Vice Mayors League of the Philippines cooperated in organizing the legislators’ assembly in a function facility that brought together vice mayors and vice governors from across BARMM that covers the provinces of Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato.

President Marcos, while at the venue of the Bangsamoro legislators’ assembly in Davao City, said his administration will continue to promote the BARMM before the international community and solicit support for its socio-economic growth from foreign benefactors, particularly member-states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC.

The OIC, a bloc of more than 50 Muslim states, including petroleum-exporting nations in the Middle East and North Africa, helped broker Malacañang’s separate peace compacts with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, whose chairman, Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, is now chief minister of the now four-year-old BARMM, and with the Moro National Liberation Front that has senior leaders who are either at the helm of its agencies or are members of the 80-seat regional parliament.

President Marcos also talked about the importance of the existing seven intergovernmental mechanisms - the Philippine Congress-Bangsamoro Parliament Forum, Intergovernmental Fiscal Policy Board, Joint Body for the Zones of Joint Cooperation, Intergovernmental Infrastructure Development Board, Intergovernmental Energy Board, the Bangsamoro Sustainable Development Board and the Council of Leaders - organized together by the national government and stakeholders in BARMM to support the southern peace process.

“We are happy that Malacañang is all out in helping BARMM grow into a peaceful, progressive region,” said the chairman of the Bangsamoro Regional Board of Investments, Mohammad Pasigan.

Members of the Bangsamoro Darul Iftah, or House of Opinions, composed of Islamic clerics, among them missionaries who had studied at the Al-Azzar University in Cairo, Egypt, and in schools in Saudi Arabia and in Libya, also expressed gratitude to President Marcos for his commitment to nurture the gains of the Mindanao peace process.