The passage of the Bangsamoro Organic (BOL) the second coming of the ill-fated Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) in Congress went through the needle’s eye
By EDD K. USMAN | @edd1819 | @bluestar0910 | SDN — Science and Digital News
Short link: https://wp.me/paaccn-he7
(SDN) — President Rodrigo R. Duterte signed the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) on July 26, 2018, perhaps his administration’s biggest legacy for effectively ending the over half-a-century Mindanao conflict.
“Ending” if qualified, would mean the end of Moros’ struggle for self-determination through — at first aimed at the independence of Mindanao — the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
The BOL was a landmark and historic piece of legislation that passed through the proverbial eye of the needle, for while there were many who supported its passage, there were also many who did not want it to reach the hands of Duterte.
The BOL’s first iteration fell in the onslaught of a gauntlet of deadly obstacles after the ill-fated attempted arrest of Malaysian militant Zulkifli bin Hir (alias Marwan) on January 25, 2015, in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, part of the then Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). After the smoke of gunfire, 44 members of the elite Special Action Force (SAF) of the Philippine National Police (PNP) tasked to arrest Marwan died from a combined force of the MILF and the rogue Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).
The Malaysian was killed as well as 18 Moro rebels and seven civilians. He had US$5 million bounty on his head from the American Department of Justice (DOJ).
Immediately thereafter, public opinion turned against the MILF, thus, derailing in Congress the attempt to create a new political entity (NPE) through the aborted Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL). That was in the 16th Congress.
Later, the 17th Congress in 2018 with the then Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the House of Representatives, she successfully steered the replacement of the BBL, the BOL which Duterte signed into law.
Around six years from then, it’s national and local elections on May 9, 2022 and there are senators at the time of the BOL who are now running for re-election.
And this is not lost on the Mindanao-based Bangsamoro civil society organizations (CSOs) that pushed for the Mindanao peace process and the events in the Senate and the House re: BBL and BOL.
They remember, needless to say, who supported the passage of the BBL through to the BOL.
To show their gratitude, the Bangsamoro CSOs based in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) have joined hands to rally behind the candidacy for the Senate of Senators Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri, Joel Villanueva, Win Gatchalian, Riza Hontiveros, Richard Gordon, and Loren Legarda.
They are also rooting senatorial bets Robin “Abdul Aziz” Padilla and Samira “Sam” Gutoc.
“They know who we are,” a leader of one of the CSOs said, as he asked that their organizations for the time being not be revealed. (✓)