COTABATO CITY—The United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP) on Monday declared here that it wants only honest-to-goodness, straightforward politics in the May 2025 elections.
“No stage entertainment, no musical intermissions, no ‘Marites’ (rumor-mongering), no espionage, no intrigues, and no slanderous remarks against political opponents: This is the kind of “open politics” that the United Bangsamoro Justice Party wants to introduce to the Philippine public in the coming May 2025 elections, the party stressed.
Top leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) said such tenets laid down by the UBJP will catapult itself to power in the mainstream body-politic, as long as its members and constituents were guided by the code of conduct in the Qur’an, the Muslim Holy Book.
Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod Ebrahim said the current challenge to the MILF-led UBJP was to win in the 2025 local and national elections. Ebrahim described the challenges the Bangsamoro leadership is facing as a “masala,” an Arabic word for “greater public interest.”
Hence, there was neither a musical intermission nor dance numbers during the launch Saturday of the UBJP at the compound of the Cotabato State University (CSU) here.
An insider in the BARMM hierarchy said the UBJP leaders probably deemed it an “exploitation” of the youth to be used in political campaigns.
Mohagher Iqbal, former chief peace negotiator for the MILF said the revolutionary group has evolved from its armed struggle in the past to political struggle at present. He noted that Muslim leaders in history had also briefly transitioned from being combatants to being politicians over the challenges of public administration.
Iqbal, a member of the Bangsamoro Parliament, concurrently serves as the Minister of Basic, Higher and Technical Education (MBHTE) of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
The BARMM officials consisted mainly of former MILF leaders in participative collaboration with their counterparts in the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) of both the Muslimin Sema Wing, and the Nur Misuari group
Maguindanao del Norte Gov. Abdulraof Macacua said removing those “traditional ingredients” in wooing votes in Philippine politics was difficult. But it was time, he said, that the local Muslim leaders and their supporters should think, being followers of Islam first, and being part of a Bangsamoro community that despises backbiting and slanderous remarks against any person in public.
“Expect more challenges, from our predicaments in public administration, having been through the armed struggle in most of our lives; that we haven’t been a barangay captain even. But despite this fact, the national government, by most indications, is satisfied with our performance. For one, the national government gave us the right mechanism for a transition period,” Ebrahim said.
Ebrahim cited the double-digit downtrend in the region’s poverty indices, as one basis of the national government being satisfied with the performance of the Bangsamoro government which, he said, was guided by the “tenets of the moral governance” being espoused by the regional leadership.
He noted that “continuity” in the “collective commitment to moral governance” was the only way through winning the challenges of underdevelopment, brought about by a long period of armed conflict.
For this, he said, the UBJP must win in the May 2025 elections.
Macacua is a former MILF military leader who has since been appointed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as governor of Maguindanao del Norte.