It is significant to note the conscious effort on the part of the GPH and MILF to frame the issues and positions in a way to avert dividing the Bangsamoro and the MILF.

The appointment of the new interim Chief Minister and BTA members is delicately framed by the GPH and the MILF to protect the peace process. We credit our leaders in avoiding incendiary words that may cause adverse reactions. Yes, managing communications may be necessary to avert conflicts in the short term. But peace founded on managing the message alone is unsustainable.

Many are wondering the compelling reasons for the change in the leadership in the BARMM, and the appointment of new BTA members seven (7) months before the regional elections. Indeed, the talk about the appointment of a new interim chief minister has been brewing since last year. Yet, then and now, no plausible reason has been articulated other than the legal fiction that it is the President’s prerogative to appoint the interim leaders in the BARMM. The MILF has publicly made its stand clear that while the President has the prerogative to appoint whoever he wishes to lead the BARMM, the CAB and the BOL provide that the BTA as a transitory authority is to be MILF-led. Thus, the MILF’s choice of leaders must be seriously considered by the President.

In the last 6 years of the BTA, the national government has been generally accommodating to the MILF. BTA 1 from 2019 to 2022 and BTA 2 from 2022 until March this year, the GPH has respected the list of BTA members submitted by the MILF for appointment. For BTA 3 that will only be for a brief period of 7 months, many are stunned by this drastic move to appoint a new ICM and BTA members, some of whom are not in the list submitted by the MILF.

What has changed to merit the national government taking such a risky move? What is expected to be done in 7 months that have not been done in the last 6 years of the BTA?

I am sorry to say that a weakness of this peace process is that instead of facing some difficult issues head-on as partners, our leaders would rather put them under the rug and let critical questions just linger. The public is then bombarded and dazzled by well written press releases with big words bereft of details —peace, autonomy, self-determination and moral governance to sugarcoat conflictual issues. But make no mistake, questions that linger, unaddressed and unspoken become unresolved grievance and a source of mistrust and pent-up resentment.

In our arsenal of keeping the peace is public funds and public office as incentives or disincentives for people to toe the line for peace. In the normalization and political tracks of the peace process, money and public office are the problem and the solution for everything.

In normalization, national government is accused of not providing enough funds for MILF communities and combatants. Yet, the BTA allocates funds and jobs to MILF members and combatants even if they have not been decommissioned or granted amnesty.

Decommissioning is stalling because it looks that there is no point for it in the first place. Application for amnesty is in trickles because it appears that there is no need for it to gain access to public funds and to hold public office.

In the political track, all bets are on the appointed BTA and the priority codes that the BOL mandates it to enact. The term of the BTA was extended and the first parliamentary elections postponed for two (2) times because the BTA needed more time to pass the priority codes. The “foundation of the Bangsamoro has to be strong” is the mantra for extending the political transition.

We seem to be forgetting that the CAB and the BOL envision the political transition to be short-lived because an MILF-led BTA is simply an accommodation to the MILF. The soonest the political transition ends and elections for the regular parliamentary government, the better for evolving an inclusive, accountable and democratic autonomous government for the Bangsamoro.

The longer we hold off elections, the more we entrench a culture where people without public mandates feel entitled to public funds and to political office. Public funds are regarded more as “war booties” than public funds. In this environment, moral governance is a slogan without structures and policies to enforce it. Autonomy is a privilege than a regime of accountability.

In a few months, we have witnessed developments that we haven’t seen in the last 6 years. For the first time, the use of the block grant by the BTA is scrutinized in Congress. Does this signal a change in course from appeasement and accommodation to exacting accountability and promoting a rules-based BARMM even how late in the day?

Whatever it is and however we view the current situation, we must heed the lessons of the peace process— it will fail if it is driven solely by unilateral press releases and the promise and peril of money and public office. Let us revisit and restore the hallmarks that animate the peace process for decades —building trust and accountable institutions thru dialogue and partnerships.

Benedicto Bacani