Basilan residents seek extension of BTA term until 2025

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Thousands of Moro Islamic Liberation Front members in Basilan joined Wednesday’s peace caravan in the island province to dramatize their bid for a three-year extension of the term of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority.

Hadji Dan Asnawie, chief of the MILF’s 114th Base Command in Basilan, said Friday they are optimistic President Rodrigo Duterte will certify as urgent a bill pending in the legislature seeking the deferment to 2025 of next year’s first ever regional elections in the Bangsamoro region.

Various sectors in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, among them Christians and non-Moro indigenous people, also motored on Wednesday through highways in central Mindanao, in Lanao del Sur, in Lanao del Norte and in the Zamboanga peninsula to show support for efforts to secure an extension of the BTA’s tenure.

The BTA, composed of 80 members led by Chief Minister Ahod Ebrahim, is more known as the “interim parliament” of the BARMM.

BARMM covers the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato.

Asnawie and Gerry Salapuddin, who is administrator of the Southern Philippines Development Authority, placed at no less than 1,500 their estimate of the MILF members and immediate supporters who joined Wednesday’s peace caravan in Basilan.

The caravan was capped off with the symbolic travel of participants from Lamitan City and around the province through the Basilan circumferential road.

Salapuddin, a Yakan, saw action and was even wounded in combat thrice while a young leader of the Moro National Liberation Front in Basilan during the 1970s.

He said he supports the efforts of the majority of BARMM’s culturally-pluralistic residents to secure an extension for three more years of the BTA’s term to give the still 27-month Bangsamoro government enough time to put in place mechanisms for regional governance.

“The effort obviously got stymied by the coronavirus pandemic. The transition from the defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to BARMM also got stymied," Salapuddin, who is from Tuburan town in Basilan, said in a statement.

Basilan was supposedly a bastion solely of the MNLF until many residents started joining the MILF more than a decade ago, turning the island province into a shared stronghold by both fronts.

The MNLF forged a peace pact with the national government on Sept. 2, 1996.

The MILF had separate compacts with Malacañang, the 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro and, subsequently, the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro that paved the way for the creation of BARMM.

Asnawie, the most senior MILF official in Basilan, said both fronts are coexisting in the island province, together in furthering the gains of President Duterte’s effort of putting a diplomatic solution to the now six-decade southern secessionist strife.