Give the issue a rest, the people of Sulu have decided
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MANILA, January 3, 2026 (SDN) — Is it a big schism at a cost of Php6 billion, more or less, annually?
In the language of the flood control projects scandal, “maleta” suitcase as key word, Php6 billion would take 120 maleta at Php50 million each.
Lawyer Naguib G. Sinarimbo, member of the Parliament (MP) of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA), and vice chair of the Committee on Finance, Budget and Management, said he was not very sure about the amount that should go to Sulu every year as BARMM component, “but I think roughly Php6 billion.”
He told Travelin’ Light that Sulu still has its 2025 budget allocation intact.
“If 2026, what we have funded is the salaries of BARMM Ministries, offices and other agencies assigned in Sulu until the National Government agencies shall have absorbed them or disposed of them,” Sinarimbo, former head of the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government (MILG) for close to six years, points out.
He explained that projects which are still ongoing for being funded before the Supreme Court ruling in 2024 will continue until completion. Except from 2026 onward.
“BARMM can no longer fund programs and projects (for the province), given that the Supreme Court decision that Sulu is no longer part of BARMM is final and executory. Malacañang already has an executive order in this regard,” explains Sinarimbo.
He was referring to the presidential Executive Order No. 91, s. 2025 directing the official re-integration of Sulu to Region IX (Western Mindanao).
In a post on social media dated January 5, 2025, Sulu Gov. Abdusakur Tan, Jr. welcomed his province’s official re-integration to Region IX, citing the Supreme Court decision in “Province of Sulu v. Medialdea”.
In May 2023, Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education (MBHTE) Minister Mohagher M. Iqbal traveled to the Bangsamoro island provinces of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi to distribute a shipload of school-related supplies, among them IT equipment and tools such as personal computers (PCs), printers, fax machines; Teacher’s Kits; Learner’s Kits; clocks; fans (bentilador), and many others.
Sulu received around Php67 million worth of supplies in that trip alone that brought Iqbal and his party to Banguingi on Tongkil Island, the capital Jolo, Patikul (where former Abu Sayyaf members received livelihood equipment), Panamao, Talipao, and Siasi.
The MBHTE also turned over to Sulu a completed Php17.04 million Flagship School Building for the Hadji Butu School of Arts and Trade (HBSAT) in Jolo with 19 classrooms, two facultry rooms, two mushallah (prayer rooms), and a library.
Iqbal also led groundbreaking ceremonies for some more school building projects for the schools division office (SDO) of the province.
Remember that there are over 6,000 teaching and non-teaching personnel employed with BARMM. What happens to them?
The then-Governor Hadji Abdusakur Tan, Sr. had a meeting with Iqbal who paid him a courtesy call when the MBHTE party reached Jolo from Banguingi municipality and, obviously they had more plans for collaboration on education, principally. It was their first meeting since 2020.
Now, looking back, think of what Php6 billion annually can do to Sulu, once a component area of Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) which had long thirsted for financial resources.
Think health (hospitals, medicines, medical equipment); education (school buildings/classrooms, hiring teachers, scholarships); and livelihood projects (farm equipment/tools, motorized bancas for fishing, sari-sari stores), etc.
That’s a lot to lose, whichever way you look at it. Money’s not everything, but if you have money you have power, you have influence, and you command!
More importantly, you have resources to power your programs, projects, and services for your constituents. And some more left for “unprogrammed” expenses in the language of senators and congressmen in the General Appropriations Act (GAA). What a wonderful world!
Maybe not as simple as that in looking at the isolation by designed — think Supreme Court decision — based on prior petition for exclusion, then 54 percent “No” votes over “Yes” in the plebiscite in 2019 that effectively cut the province’s umbilical cord from the Bangsamoro (or Moro) family.
For the decision makers, who wave the baton of command, our hope is for them to make us understand the mindset behind the schism from the Bangsamoro, and from there a dialogue can be convened among brothers for a more thorough discussion of whatever issues caused the split. Maybe in some future times the tides of change would bring back Sulu and the Tausug people to the arms of the BARMM and its diverse population. Hope springs eternal.
Perhaps, in the dialogue, some questions would be answered, to cite a few:
1. What’s in the mind of the political leaders of Sulu which, perhaps, drives the province and the Tausug people more and more away from their Moro brethren and the Bangsamoro region?
2. Is it the term Bangsamoro? Is it something deeper than the term that lumps all Muslims in the country into a single community, a single regional Ummah in the Philippines?
3. Is it about the distribution of the financial resources of the BARMM, the Php94-billion automatic block grant from the National Government, courtesy of Republic Act (RA) No. 11054, the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL)?
4. Is it about equal employment opportunities?
5. Is it about politics?
6. Or, is it something deeper which only the political leaders of Sulu are privy?
7. Can the clock be turned back to before the September 9, 2024, Supreme Court decision cutting Sulu off the BARMM family?
Even the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has oft-acknowledged Sulu as the “cradle” of the struggle for self-determination of the Muslims in the Philippines, the Moros, or the Bangsamoro as officially acknowledged in the country’s statutes?
So, why is it that Sulu political and traditional leaders who make the decisions are rejecting solidarity with the Bangsamoro region? Bakit parang isinusuka nila ang resulta ng deka-dekadang pakikipaglaban? Bakit ayaw din nila sa MILF at ibang grupo ng Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)?
Remember, some political and traditional leaders of the province rejected being called “Bangsamoro”, asserting they are “Tausug”, the People of the Current.
The latest declaration of further separation and isolation from the Bangsamoro region was the resolution on December 26, 2025, of the Sulu Provincial Board chaired by now-Vice Governor Tan, Sr. — signed by eight Board members and approved by Governor Toto Tan, Jr. — that banned activities and expansion on the Sulu islands of the MILF chaired by Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim.
At the same time, the resolution recognized the province as a sole domain only of the MNLF under its founding chair, Nur P. Misuari; necessarily to the exclusion of the MILF founded by Ustadhz Salamat Hashim in 1977.
Apparently, the resolution’s trigger was the planned assembly of the MILF in Luuk municipality on December 29, of which the provincial government pointed out had no clearance from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) contingent in Sulu, raising peace and security concerns from provincial officials. The military blocked the MILF members going to their assembly area.
In the past the MNLF had fractured into many breakaway factions, foremost is the MILF (with the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters or BIFF splitting); then came the Islamic Command Council (ICC) led by Melham Alam, with another MNLF-ICC headed by Commander Diego; another was the MNLF Executive Council of 16 (now obviously the MNLF-Sema group); the Alvarez Wing, and others.
Thus, when the Sulu Provincial Board mentioned in its resolution the MNLF it meant the one led by Misuari, and surely excluded the MNLF breakaway factions. In the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) with 57 member countries, the MNLF-Misuari group holds a rare distinction of an Observer Status, a much coveted recognition by non-government organizations (NGOs) and even States.
Perhaps, this declaration may elicit reactions from factions of the MNLF, such as the MILF, which boasts of the biggest number of members, and the MNLF chaired by BARMM Labor Minister Muslimen G. Sema based in Maguindanao del Norte with members across Mindanao.
In fact, yes!
First, the MILF Sulu Political Committees, Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (MILF-BIAF) officers, and Sectoral leaders have issued a statement opposing the ban on MILF activities as the Sulu Provincial Board put forth.
“We express our grave and unequivocal objection to Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Sulu’s Resolution No. 83-2025. Its pronouncements dangerously distort the legal standing, historic mandate, and continuing obligations arising from nationally enacted laws and internationally guaranteed peace agreements that ended decades of armed conflict. Such reckless misjudgments threaten to weaken — if not deliberately erode — the very foundations of the peace architecture painstakingly built through sacrifice, struggle, and dialogue.
“Let it be stated clearly and without ambiguity: the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is neither a private armed group nor a lawless element. It is a recognized revolutionary organization and a principal signatory to the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), forged with the Government of the Philippines and witnessed by the international community,” part of the MILF statement emphasises.
The MNLF-Sema faction issued a separate statement on the issue of exclusion addressed to the Sulu Provincial Board (Sangguniang Panlalawigan), the leadership of the MILF, GPH (Philippine Government), OIC, and other stakeholders of peace.
“Our struggle has never been about power or territory for one group. It has always been about dignity, justice, and unity for all Moro people,” the Sema-led MNLF group asserts.
It added that peace accords complement each other, they do not compete, apparently referring to the GPH-MNLF’s 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA) and GPH-MILF’s 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).
The group of Sema acknowledged Sulu as “one of the cradles of Moro resistance and an integral part of the Bangsamoro homeland” as the MILF had expressed in the same manner.
Sema’s group urged the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Unity and Reconciliation (OPAPRU) under Secretary Carlito G. Galvez, Jr. “to exercise its mandate to provide oversight, guidance, and facilitation in addressing” the impact of the Sulu Provincial Board’s exclusionary resolution.
The MNLF-Sema faction made clear its rejection of “any action or narrative that frames the Province of Sulu as the exclusive domain of a single Moro group or that marginalizes other legitimate Moro organizations.”
Recall that after the fateful Supreme Court ruling, the leaders of the BARMM, the MILF, the MNLF-Sema group, civil society and people’s groups, prominent leaders, even senators and some congressmen expressed the desire to have Sulu back in the Bangsamoro region.
The Senate on February 5, 2025, held a public hearing presided by Senators Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri and Jose Victor “JV” Ejercito attended by BARMM officials (in the time of then Chief Minister Ebrahim) and Sulu political leaders led by Tan, Sr. with his contingent of mayors.
Respect Sulu’s position, give the issue a rest, the Tausug people have decided
Ebrahim, the president of the MILF political wing, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), and other Bangsamoro officials expressed their ardent desire for Sulu’s return to the Bangsamoro region, recognizing the Tausug people’s key role in the struggle for self-determination and the fraternal brotherhood forged in centuries of Moro Wars against Spanish colonizers. He backed a second plebiscite to return Sulu to the BARMM.
In November 2024, Zubiri filed Senate Bill (SB) No. 2915 to re-include Sulu in the Bangsamoro region.
But the Sulu governor was adamant, unwavering in his position on Sulu’s abandoning the regional autonomous region.
Tan, Sr. said to the effect at the hearing that Sulu is sufficient by itself and that they will rely on the National Government.
OPAPRU officials attended the hearing that also proposed a plebiscite for Sulu’s return to the BARMM.
After the hearing, Travelin’ Light asked the governor about his thoughts on the proposed plebiscite.
“They can’t get even 5 percent (of Yes votes) ,” he says. (In the 2019 plebiscite, over 20,000 No votes (for breakup) were the difference with Yes (to remain with BARMM).
With Sulu now once again with Region IX, perhaps it’s time to give the issue a rest, meantime, give space to the province. Even how much those from without want it back to the fold of the BARMM family.
And from there like brothers, nurture brotherhood, cultivate common aspirations, remain friends, and wish each other success!
Let’s hope Sulu would receive at least Php6 billion of support from the National Government now that it’s with Region IX.
Travelin’ Light believes in the cliché that time heals all wound! (©)