“We were forced to bear arms. Now it is over.”
— UBJP President Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim
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COTABATO CITY, February 19, 2024 (SDN) — “UBJP is not only my party, it’s your party, it’s our party!”
United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP) President Ahod B. “Al-Haj Murad” Ebrahim issued this rallying cry here at the 1st Regional General Assembly of the political platform of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
The UBJP is priming up for the scheduled first parliamentary political exercise in May 2025 in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). Once a separatist revolutionary organization that fought for an Islamic State in the Southern Philippines, the MILF today is a long way off from armed fighting to believers of democratic process.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. already made it known in a speech in Manila during the February 8 National Government and Bangsamoro Government 17th Inter-Governmental Relations Body (IGRB) that he wants the parliamentary election to push through. And without the chronic violence that hit every election in the country.
“On this, let me be blunt in my warning as it is what our people want: Let not one bullet disenfranchise one single ballot. After the elections, it will be a new chapter for BARMM,” the President said in front of Ebrahim, the Bangsamoro Chief Minister and MILF chair, and other national and regional officials.
The UBJP gathering held at the Cotabato State University (CSU) Oval was conducted with the sizzling sun providing an atmosphere of a pressure cooker. Nevertheless, the palpable enthusiasm of close to 28,000 registered participants (as organizers reported) many of them in green colored T-shirts stamped with UBJP sticker/logo maintain their posts under several green-white-striped giant tents.
Many still are of the youthful crowd of the Bangsamoro, they who are drivers of the digital era, honed on emerging technologies, with their smartphones in their hands. Either taking videos of the event before them, or communicating with each other, in the cyber language they are most adept.
Delivering the Welcome Remarks, UBJP Executive Vice President Mohagher M. Iqbal cited the need for solidarity among members of the party.
“We are brothers in faith, in humanity,” he stressed as he encouraged the members to collectively harvest the fruits of the Bangsamoro struggle for self-determination, economic uplift, and freedom to live peacefully and with stability. Iqbal cited the significance of the parliamentary election in 2025, asking them “to share your efforts for a credible, honest, and orderly (political exercise).”
Ebrahim, as much as counting on the youth members of the UBJP, is also high on the participation of the elder generations.
“We were forced to bear arms. Now it is over,” he recalled, as he referred to the decades of Moro struggle for self-determination waged by the MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
“Hinihimok ko kayong lahat, lalo na ang mga kabataan na makibahagi sa gaganaping 2025 parliamentary elections. Let this be your battle now. Hindi na ito para sa amin, ito ay para sa inyong kinabukasan, sa inyong mga anak sa susunod na mga henerasyon,” the UBJP president exhorting the youth said.
(Translation: I am calling on all of you, especially the youth, to participate in the forthcoming 2025 parliamentary elections. Let this be your battle now. This is no longer for us, this is for your future, for your children and the next generations.)
At 10:56 a.m., after his President’s Report, Ebrahim, Chief Minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) and has been the MILF chieftain since 2003, officially swore in the UBJP members, many of them sailed the seas from the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi.
Participants from the various municipalities of the landlocked provinces of Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, and Lanao del Sur came in convoys of cars.
Many of the delegation members stayed at the newly refurbished AlNor Hotel and Convention Center, also along Sinsuat Avenue which forms an artery that connects the city to other areas of Mindanao from the South. The hotel is not very far from the CSU, the former Polytechnic College.
UBJP president explains significance of party’s name
“Unang una (first of all), this a symbol of our unity,” Ebrahim said to the ecstatic throngs of people all responding to the UBJP call for unity and justice, and continuation of the struggle of the Bangsamoro people for economic uplift and freedom, peace, and stability through the leadership of the MILF-led Bangsamoro government.
Ebrahim explained to the assembled massive crowd why the MILF political party has the terms “united, Bangsamoro, and justice” in its name.
“United,” he said, is for the unity of the Bangsamoro people, “Bangsamoro” is their identity, while “justice” means giving what is due to everyone, the balancing of rights and obligations to each other. “That’s Islam,” he emphasized, meaning, “we are one.”
“Our advocacy is ‘moral governance,” he added, saying it’s one of the moral values of Islam. “Implementing justice so everyone gets what is ‘wajib’ (due) to them.”
Presently, the UBJP president said the Bangsamoro Transition Authority’s (BTA) 80 Members of Parliament (MPs) were not elected. “We did not have election yet.”
He was referring to the six years transition phase in the Bangsamoro region starting in 2019 until 2025 as the BARMM Government of the Day puts in place a governance structure in preparation for regularly-elected MPs. From the MPs, the Chief Minister will be chosen and elected by a winning majority party.
Ebrahim said the Bangsamoro voters will elect the MPs in the first regional parliamentary polls. To be voted upon are the BARMM political parties and representatives of every district. (Presently, the Parliament is taking up a districting bill that allocates districts in the BARMM.)
The Bangsamoro region, established in 2018 by the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) to implement the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), is made up of the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi, the cities of Cotabato, Lamitan, and Marawi, as well as the Special Geographic Area’s (SGA) 63 barangays or villages that voted “Yes” in a plebiscite in February 2019 to be under the BARMM jurisdiction.
According to the Philippine Atlas BARMM has 4,404,288 people. It has 116 municipalities: Basilan, 11 municipalities; Lanao del Sur, 39; undivided Maguindanao, 36; Sulu, 19; and Tawi-Tawi, 11. Its component cities are Cotabato (the regional center and capital) in Maguindanao; Lamitan in Basilan; and Marawi in Lanao del Sur. (✓)