President Duterte has approved the proposed executive order seeking the implementation of the annex on the normalization program in the Bangsamoro region, Malacañang said on Tuesday.
Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo bared that during the 35th Cabinet meeting on Monday evening, the Chief Executive greenlighted the normalization program under the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.
The normalization annex, which deals with the decommissioning of the MILF’s armed wing and disarming privates armies in the new Bangsamoro region, is the last of the four annexes to the CAB forged between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 2014.
“We are doing everything we can to help achieve peace [in Mindanao]. Anything that is contributory to the goal of peace in that place, we will do it,” Panelo said in a Palace press briefing.
“The MILF has allowed itself to be subjected to the [peace] process. They really want peace. They despise war now.”
In Cotabato City, Interim Chief Minister Hadji Murad Ibrahim wants government workers to closely engage grassroots residents and officials in development planning for rehabilitation of conflict-affected areas in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, BARMM Minister of Local Governments, said Murad had specific instructions on an anti-corruption government agenda through full-disclosure and transparency programs on the allocation and utilization of Internal Revenue Allotment by local government units.
Murad himself on Monday opened the two-day strategic planning sessions of the BARMM-MLG here which will delve on new development programs and projects during the first 100 days of BARMM.
The Palace has yet to release a copy of the executive order.
Panelo, meanwhile, admitted he was not privy to the presentation led by presidential peace adviser Carlito Galvez Jr.
Under the last annex to the framework agreement, the normalization process hopes to achieve the “desired quality of life, which includes the pursuit of sustainable livelihood and political participation within a peaceful deliberative society.”
The annex also aims to intensify the efforts to rehabilitate, reconstruct, and develop the Bangsamoro region.
It also provides for the creation of a transitional justice program that plans to address the Bangsamoro people’s grievances, correct historical injustices, and tackle human rights violations.
Meanwhile, the other annexes deal with transitional modalities, revenue generation, wealth sharing, and power sharing.
These annexes were initially crafted to serve as guides for the Bangsamoro Basic Law, seeking to end the decades-old armed conflict in the war-torn region.
The BBL, which is now referred to as the Bangsamoro Organic Law, was previously ratified in January 2019, creating the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in place of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Last week, the President led the oath-taking of the 80-member Bangsamoro Transition Authority, which will be the interim government of the BARMM until elections in 2022. Currently, MILF chair Al Haj Murad Ebrahim serves as its chief minister. With Nash Maulana
