The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao will hold its first parliamentary election on Monday, and Muslims in the region are voting after years of transition under the Bangsamoro Transition Authority. The ballot will decide the makeup of the region’s first legislative body and formally end the interim phase that began after the region was established in 2018.
Abdulraof Macacua, the Chief Minister, is also in the middle of a political split inside the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Last month, he joined the newly formed Bangsamoro Federalist Party, and shortly after that his convoy was attacked; he survived unscathed.
Bangsamoro Transition Authority ends
The Bangsamoro Transition Authority was appointed in 2019 to run the region during the shift away from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. That interim setup was built through the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, which outlined the transition and set up the MILF-dominated authority to lead it.
The election now replaces that appointed arrangement with a parliament chosen by vote. Under the Organic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the region gained greater fiscal autonomy, a regional government, a parliament, and a justice system.
Moro Islamic Liberation Front split
Two camps have emerged within the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, one loyal to Al Haj Murad Ebrahim and another supporting Macacua. The Bangsamoro Federalist Party will compete against the United Bangsamoro Justice Party, turning the election into a test of which camp can organize the region’s first legislature.
That contest sits on top of a longer political settlement. The election is the outcome of decades of armed conflict and negotiations between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government of the Philippines, after the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was created in 1989 and later described by Benigno Aquino III in 2012 as a “failed experiment.”
Past polls in Mindanao
Past elections in the region were marked by vote-buying, election-related violence, fraud, and manipulation. That record gives Monday’s vote a narrower margin for error than a routine transfer of power would have, especially with factions inside the Moro Islamic Liberation Front now competing in public rather than staying inside one command structure.
For readers in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the immediate change is practical: the vote determines who sits in the region’s first legislative body and whether the transition finally ends under the new parliamentary system. Abdulraof Macacua’s position, the split inside the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and the party contest between the Bangsamoro Federalist Party and the United Bangsamoro Justice Party are the clearest signals of how that legislature may be shaped.
