BARMM Election Security Efforts Praised for Community Support

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Military officials and multi-sector peace and order councils led by local executives had separately appreciated the Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous communities for supporting the inter-agency security efforts during the September 14 Bangsamoro parliamentary elections. Officials of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division and the Armed Forces of the Philippines Peace and Development Office, most known as the AFPPDO, wrapped up on Wednesday, September 16, their poll security activities, enforced under the guidance of the Commission on Elections, during a multi-sector conference at Camp Siongco in Barangay Awang in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao del Norte. Comelec Chairman George Erwin Garcia and Presidential Adviser on Peace Reconciliation and Unity Mel Senen Sarmiento had separately told reporters earlier, while at Camp Siongco, that there were indeed election-related incidents in Cotabato City and in other areas in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao during the September 14 BARMM parliamentary polls, but the exercise proceeded as scheduled and was virtually successful. Army officials, including Col. Alvin Iyog of the AFPPDO, representatives from the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace Reconciliation and Unity attended Wednesday’s dialogue at Camp Siongco, where they talked about the atrocities during the actual polling day and the setting up of measures to prevent such during electoral exercises in areas under the 6th ID and PRO-BAR’s jurisdiction. Representatives from the office of BARMM Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua and from local government units in Central Mindanao also participated in the activity, jointly led by Iyog, Brig. Gen. Ricky Bunayog, who is acting commander of 6th ID, his deputy, Brig. Gen. Edgar Catu, and PRO-BAR’s deputy director for administration, Police Brig. Gen. Jemuel Siason, where they acknowledged the contributions of the local communities to their poll security initiatives enforced on September 14 under the supervision of Comelec. The 6th ID’s territory encompasses BARMM’s adjoining Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte provinces, all of the 37 barangays in Cotabato City and the eight towns in the Bangsamoro Special Geographic Area in Cotabato, a component province of Administrative Region 12. Bunayog said he and his subordinate-officers in 6th ID’s headquarters in Camp Siongco and its component-brigades and battalions are also grateful to local executives and the peace and order councils under them for helping push forward the Army and police’s election peacekeeping missions last September 14. “The role of the local communities and local government units in keeping peace in their respective territories during electoral exercises is so important. We in the Army and the police will have a hard time doing it without community support,” Bunayog said. Wednesday’s post-election security meeting at Camp Siongco was capped off with the signing of commitment, printed on a tarpaulin, by participants to cooperate on activities meant to foster reconciliation and unity among the local communities that supported rival political parties during the September 14 first-ever Bangsamoro parliamentary elections.