COTABATO CITY — The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is reaching out to other stakeholders in Mindanao, including non-Muslims, Indigenous Peoples and even Nur Misuari to solicit support for the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL).
Misuari is head of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
“Even the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), we will reach out to them,” Ghazali Jaafar, MILF vice chair for political affairs, said in a radio interview here Saturday.
The BIFF is a breakaway group of the MILF formed by the late Ombra Kato, who had expressed impatience over the delayed peace process in Mindanao. It became outlawed and fractured into smaller groups before its mother organization publicly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Jaafar, concurrent chair of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) that drafted the proposed enabling law that will create a new political entity for Moro people in Southern Philippines, said the MILF does not claim sole ownership for the success of the struggle to gain the right to self-determination.
He maintained that the BOL encompasses faith, religious belief, culture, and tradition, including political affiliations of leaders in Mindanao so genuine peace would be achieved in the island.
President Rodrigo Duterte had announced earlier the need to unify all Moro fronts in the southern Philippines so real peace would be achieved.
Misuari, whose MNLF forged a peace deal with Manila in 1996, is currently cooperating in the government-MILF peace process that could eventually lead for the establishment of a federal form of government in the country, which the Duterte administration had been pushing for.
Jaafar said a committee has been formed to reach out to Misuari and his leaders, while assuring elected officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) that the BOL is just an expanded form of the current ARMM.
ARMM Regional Assemblyman Zia Alonto Adiong of the first district of Lanao del Sur pointed out that a provision of the BOL clearly states that elected officials will remain until their term ends when the new political entity is eventually set up on the island.
Regional lawmakers, Adiong said, are not banned from seeking election in the new Bangsamoro parliament under the BOL. The new law says 50 percent of government officials in the new political entity under the BOL will come from the MILF.
Earlier, civil servants in the ARMM expressed apprehension that they might lose their jobs when the BOL is fully implemented in the region, where seven of 11 regional government agencies would be abolished.
Jaafar said the new government would not be discriminating in selecting government workers and assured that those who would be affected would be remunerated accordingly. (Edwin Fernandez/PNA)
