SULTAN KUDARAT, Magundanao, Philippines–Polls have closed in the historic plebiscite on whether or not to ratify the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) that will expand the current Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), and the common observation among stakeholders was that there was a huge turnout of voters.
Hours before the poll closed, the chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Ebrahim Murad, assured Filipino Muslim voters on Monday his group would respect a vote of rejection for the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), which would give the legal stakes to establishing the new, expanded autonomous body in Mindanao.
Fielding questions from reporters after he voted at 10:23 am in his hometown school precinct here, he said, “We are ready to accept if there’s a no vote.”
A negative vote in the plebiscite would scrap the BOL, which Congress passed last year after its predecessor, the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), failed to hurdle legal challenges.
Moving forward in case the “no” vote wins in the plebiscite ratifying the BOL, Murad told the media, “Then we will continue to strive that that agreement be implemented. But it is now the duty of the government to implement it,” he added, referring to the government’s peace agreement with the MILF.
The national government, including the regional and provincial leadership under the current Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), is confident, however, of a landslide win for a “yes” vote in this plebiscite, the third to be held since 1977, when then President Ferdinand Marcos created the regional government composed of Regions 9 (Western Mindanao) and 12 (Central Mindanao); and in 2001, which sought to expand the original autonomous territory covered by the ARMM.
Violence despite control
In Monday’s plebiscite, political violence reared its ugly head again in Cotabato City, one of only two cities outside the ARMM areas to be included in the plebiscite. The other one is Isabela City, of Basilan, which belongs to the ARMM.
The Comelec placed Cotabato City under its control following an explosion on December 31 inside the South Seas shopping mall that killed two persons. The control was intended to preempt a suspected threat to immediately come from scattered and small terror groups with allegiance to the Islamic State.
On Sunday night, a motorcycle rider lobbed a grenade at a judge’s residence in Santa Maria Street, Rosario Heights along Sinsuat Avenue. His brother, a City Hall executive, said the incident appeared to be more related to the job of his brother as a judge than the plebiscite.
While no one was injured in that 9:10 pm explosion, police and the Army had yet to explain why the gunman escaped, and why would somebody mount such attack when the highest security alert was in place in a city already placed under the Comelec control.
A person was also arrested in a downtown Cotabato City precinct when poll watchers challenged his purported identity as an assistor of voters. The suspect presented a photocopy of his purported credentials. The police brought him to a police station.
Mayor Cyntia Guiani-Sayadi also complained about supposed Moro Islamic Liberation Front leaders who allegedly coerced “Christian voters”
Aside from the Sunday night explosion, police said they also found another unexploded grenade in another business establishment downtown.
Certain persons engaged in a fist fight, the video footage of which came from a netizens.
Polling precincts opened on time in many areas of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, but in Cotabato City, long queues had formed several minutes before the scheduled opening of the school premises before 7:00 am.
As of 7:27, a polling center along downtown Quezon Avenue had remained closed, as did the Sero Central Elementary School along Sinsuat Avenue.
Radio stations monitoring the plebiscite were still heard monitoring several polling precincts which remained closed to voters near 8:00 am.
In Sero Central Elementary School, election materials were delivered by Army-escorted vans at 7:15 am but the school still, did not open 30 minutes after.
Reports of vote-buying had surfaced days earlier when an alleged citizen arm asked voters to get identification in exchange for P200. But incidents of flying voters were still widespread, with the accusation levelled against the MILF.
It was less bloody though, with peaceful and orderly conduct reported from many areas in Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur.
Pullout
Former Armed Forces Chief and current Presidential Peace Adviser, Carlito Galvez, has also asked the MILF to pull out the unarmed elements of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Force (Biaf) on Sunday night. Although the Army said the Biaf fighters were unarmed, government officials including Mayor Guiani said their presence has created fear among residents.
The Comelec-accredited Bangsamoro Free Election Movement said the MILF unit pulled out by 8:00 pm.
First exercise, expectations
Murad said this was his first time to exercise suffrage, as with the bulk of the followers and fighters of the MILF who he said had been waging war against the government “during the last 40 or 50 years (including their stint with the then monolithic Moro National Liberation Front of Nur Misuari).
“This would signify that it (MILF) it is now transforming the revolutionary process into a democratic process,” Murad told reporters, as he spoke at the gymnasium stage with several Maguindanao voters listening.
Murad was listed on the 88th slot as “Ebrahim, Ahod “Murad” Balawag” at Precint 140-B of Simuay Junction Central Elementary School. He said he wrote in English, “the international language”, when he answered in his ballot. The Comelec has allowed a yes or a no answer in the vernacular or local dialect.
“I see this as historic. We have been travelling for 50 years and it’s only now that we see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he added. “With this development, we can now address peace.”
After the plebiscite, Murad said he hoped the Bangsamoro Transition Authority would be immediately established “and start to organize our governance”.
Transparent
He vowed to make transparency as a policy, saying “this would make our people understand” what they would be doing. He said he would also be appealing for understanding “that real work would only come in 2022 when the budget would be done for the new BARMM.”
For now, the transition government administration will ride on the current budget of the ARMM.
He appealed also to donor countries and international donor agencies to continue helping them “and to maximize your help because our people would badly need them”.
The priority of the MILF-led BARMM would focus on education, medical care and services, social services and strategic infrastructure.
Word to fighters elsewhere
Asked what his message would be to sectors and peoples waging their own warS in Chechnya, Libya and African and Central Asian hotspots, Murad said, “as revolutionaries, although we resort to armed struggle, always in our mind, we see the solution to the problem is peace”.
“We never closed the doors to peace process That’s also our advice to other people who are struggling. War is not the solution,” he said.
“We resort to armed struggle just to defend ourselves,” he said.