AFTER three postponements, it appears that the road has been cleared for the first parliamentary elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) on March 30.
The final roadblock was lifted after the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) enacted the law redistributing the districts that had represented Sulu before the province ceded from the region.
The Bangsamoro Autonomy Act 86 was signed last Tuesday by BTA Speaker Mohammad Yacop and Muslimin Guiamaden, the region’s ceremonial head.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. hailed the March 20 elections as a “clear opportunity” for BARMM residents to express their voices and aspirations freely.
The road to BARMM self-governance has been long and difficult. For decades, the national government had been trying to quell the civil unrest in Mindanao ignited by Muslim secessionist groups.
The most dominant group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) of Nur Misuari, waged war against the government for 31 years. An estimated 120,000 were killed in the conflict. Hundreds of thousands more were displaced.
In 1976, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Libyan leader at the time, Moammar Gaddafi, brokered the Tripoli Agreement that put an end to the fighting. It also decreed the establishment of an autonomous Muslim region in Mindanao made up of 13 provinces.
That first attempt at autonomy failed dismally. Disagreements, mainly over the interpretation of what an autonomous region encompasses were never fully resolved, and the treaty collapsed.
The Jeddah Accord of 1987 managed to get the autonomy initiative back on track. The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) came into being. But there was one glaring issue: only four of the 13 original provinces chose to join — Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
Throughout its existence, ARMM, under Misuari’s helm, was weighed down by corruption, patronage politics and political rivalries. The region’s socioeconomic fabric frayed. Basic services were severely limited. Food insecurity was 17 times higher than the least-food-insecure region.
ARMM ranked consistently as the country’s poorest region.
The region became what critics described as “a mechanism for political accommodation rather than genuine empowerment.”
In 2014, the national government decided it was time for a reset. It signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which had replaced the MNLF in the region’s political hierarchy.
It took another five years for the Bangsamoro Organic Law to be ratified, calling for the creation of a parliament that will govern the new region.
The BTA would temporarily take over the reins of government until parliamentary elections are held.
What was designed to be a seamless shift from temporary to permanent governance was soon mired in complications.
It began when Sulu opted out of BARMM through a plebiscite, claiming the Bangsamoro Organic Law “erased the autonomy and identity” of Indigenous people.
It added that the law unconstitutionally abolished ARMM.
Sulu’s withdrawal continued to stymie efforts to elect a duly elected Bangsamoro parliament. The first elections were scheduled for May 2023, but in 2021 then-president Rodrigo Duterte signed a law resetting it to May 12, 2025, to coincide with the national and local elections.
The polls were moved again, to Oct. 13, 2025, by President Marcos. But the Supreme Court intervened, ruling that no election can happen unless the seven seats originally allocated to Sulu are redistributed.
Now that the BTA, after much debate, has complied with the Supreme Court order, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has less than three months to prepare for the polls. The Comelec assured it was up to the task.
Establishing self-governance may be the easy part. Sustaining it is the more formidable task. The regional government must confront a host of challenges, including limited fiscal autonomy, the noncontiguous nature of its territory and a stunted economy.
The BARMM Office of the chief minister is confident it will prevail. “We’ve passed through seven years of journey toward autonomy, building peace and striving for moral governance,” it said.
The establishment of BARMM is a major milestone in the continuing narrative to bring peace to Muslim Mindanao. We can only hope that it also provides the momentum for an economic reawakening that would finally lift the region from the depths of poverty it is now wallowing in.
