COTABATO CITY—Resident analysts watching the Bangsamoro plebiscite up close said the current trending on yes votes is a clear signal to expeditiously take up the task of starting the transition process.
“It’s the end of an era [for]…ARMM [Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao], [and the beginning for] the BARMM [Bangsamoro ARMM],” said noted political analyst Ramon Casiple.
For the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Casiple said, it would also be about facing its task of transitioning, from a revolutionary organization to the democratic governance.
Lawyer Camilo Montesa, a long-time development official for a United Nations’s agency, said the yes vote has taken an early lead in the counting in the precincts as of late Monday night, hours after the close of the plebiscite.
As of midafternoon Tuesday, the yes votes lead by a still uncomfortable margin at 20,579 votes as against 18,247 no votes in the hotly contested Cotabato City.
The yes votes were expected to be overwhelming in the ARMM areas, except for Sulu, whose governor, Abdusakor Tan II, filed a petition at the Supreme Court to stop the plebiscite.
Montesa said the conclusion of the plebiscite with a trending yes across the ARMM sent the transition process in motion. “We are entering a situation where a whole set of actions begins for the transition of the current ARMM to the BARMM,” Montesa said.
How the BARMM would eventually fare “is another thing.”
Decommissioning
MONTESA said a crucial issue would be the decommissioning and normalization process. “It’s not only about completing the plebiscite as a political exercise.”
“It’s about moving forward to the next important phase of the peace process, normalization,” he added.
Both the government and the MILF should immediately sit down and discuss decommissioning the armed combatants of the MILF and transitioning them to normal civilian life, he added.
The MILF has not publicly disclose the number of its fighters called the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Force. Montesa said it could between 40,000 and 50,000.
May midterm polls
CASIPLE said the conduct and result of the plebiscite “definitely would impact on the image of local politicians, as well as strategizing their campaign” especially in the contested non-ARMM areas of Cotabato City and Isabela City of Basilan.
“If the yes won in these areas but politicians campaigned no, what strategy would they adapt?,” he said.
And with the MILF in lead role to ratify the Bangsamoro Organic Law, “it has now also become a big political entity,” Casiple said. “I can’t say it can change the rules. But it will form part of the rules to be made,” Casiple said.
Threats
Comelec Spokesman James B. Jimenez said, meanwhile, that the agency has not received any complaint yet from hotly contested Cotabato City.
He also took exception from allegations that Comelec may have leaked data or have sustained a breach in its system to explain why teachers have received threats through their personal mobile phone accounts.
“It’s very hard to isolate the Comelec as source data that allowed this attempt,” Jimenez added.
He assured the Comelec would exert efforts to make sure that the culprits of threat messages would be identified.
At least one school, Canizares National High School had their teachers getting text messages telling them not to report to poll duty. Fifteen teachers eventually did not report.
“Generally it was peaceful across the ARMM except in Cotabato City, Jimenez said. “We are looking at a successful canvassing here,” he added.
Intimidation
IN Manila, however, Comelec Chairman Sheriff M. Abas said the result of the plebiscite in Cotabato City may be put into question amid reports of mass intimidation of voters in the area.
He said the poll body is now ready to accommodate complaints against people behind the reported intimidation. “It could be a pre-proc [proclamation] or [election] protest,” Abas told reporters.
He noted they have got at least seven “raw” reports of such incidents from their field office in Cotabato City of grenade throwing and commotion during the January 21 plebiscite.
With Samuel P. Medenilla