Ex-MILF rebels to join 2025 Bangsamoro polls – exec

FILE PHOTO: Members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) gather at their stronghold at Camp Darapanan in Maguindanao province in southern Philippines to coincide with the signing of a tentative peace agreement between the government and the MILF at the Malacañan Palace in Manila on Monday, October 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Karlos Manlupig)

MANILA, Philippines — Former Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) combatants will participate in the Bangsamoro parliament elections next year, an official disclosed Tuesday.

Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) Parliament deputy speaker Lanang Ali Jr. said all MILF rebel returnees will create a social movement and become automatic members of a political party named United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP).

That’s why the full decommissioning of 40,000 combatants is at top speed so it would be completed before the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) polls in May 2025, he added.

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“The purpose of meeting the 2025 decommissioning […] is that all MILF decommissioned combatants will turn into a social movement and they will automatically (be) members of the political party known as the United Bangsamoro Justice Party [UBJP]. They will participate in the 2025 elections,” Ali explained during the Senate committee on defense hearing on Tuesday.

He said UBJP currently has 26,000 members and that the MILF is preparing to take part in the elections for the 80-member Bangsamoro parliament.

“We are targeting the 100 percent in 2025 so that they can be (called) a legal personality to participate in the 2025 elections,” Ali stressed,

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The first BARMM parliamentary elections was supposed to be held in May 2022 but its was moved to May next year by then-President Rodrigo Duterte.

Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez Jr. previously said they have already decommissioned 26,132 MILF combatants as of early this year, and an estimated 14,000 more are left for decommissioning.

Meeting the deadline

In the same hearing, Government Peace Implementing Panel chairman Cesar Yano allayed doubts about meeting the decommissioning deadline.

He assured the Senate panel that they are working double time to achieve the goal. Delays in the process ensued due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The MILF rebels and arms decommissioning is part of the peace deal signed between the group and the government in March 2014.

“We all know that we are now in the last phase to decommission the last 14,000 but the start of the decommissioning is the submission of the list from the MILF,” Yano said.

Yano explained, however, that the MILF is requesting to expedite the distribution of the government’s socio economic assistance to rebel returnees as part of the process.

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“I have to admit to this body that what the MILF’s side is saying that we have to fast track the delivery of the socio economic component, so that is why we are working doubly on the part of the government of the Philippines to deliver a bigger portion of the socio economic (assistance) because this is what the MILF side is also wanting,” Yano told the Senate committee.

Part of the socio economic assistance that the government provides to MILF surrenderers is a P100,000 cash grant.

“We are hopeful that the MILF will support the peace process by completing the decommissioning. We have always told them that as we speak, we have enough money for the decommissioning (process) and they are aware [of] it,” he continued.