4 Lawyers Elected to BARMM Parliament, BFP Secures Dominance

Four lawyers from the Bangsamoro Federalist Party (BFP) have been elected as members of the 80-seat parliament in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) during the regional parliamentary polls on Monday, September 14. The BFP is poised to dominate the BARMM parliament, having secured numerous bloc party nominees and district representatives to the 80-member regional lawmaking body. Local executives in BARMM’s five provinces and three cities are anticipating lawyers Ishak Mastura, Jay Salliman, Naguib Sinarimbo, and Kitem Kadatuan Jr. to spearhead deliberations on regional laws that their bloc will draft and submit for approval. More than half of the 116 municipal mayors in BARMM are members of the BFP. Three of the region’s five provincial governors and the chief executives in its three cities—Lamitan, Marawi, and Cotabato—are also BFP members. Lawyers Mastura, Salliman, and Sinarimbo were elected as representatives of parliamentary districts in Maguindanao del Norte, Basilan, and Cotabato City, respectively. Kadatuan, who is of Maguindanaon descent, is among the 16 BFP members elected as bloc nominees to represent their party in the region’s lawmaking body. "They shall, as lawyers, become the strong voice in the Bangsamoro parliament of Muslim, Christian, and indigenous non-Moro communities in all provinces and cities in the Bangsamoro region," BFP’s president, BARMM Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua, told reporters. Macacua, who also oversees all agencies of the regional government as an appointee of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., was also elected last Monday as representative of a parliamentary district covering several barangays in Cotabato City and Maguindanao del Sur province. The newly elected parliament member Mastura, who had served as regional trade and investment secretary in the now-defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, is a scion of a big noble Moro clan in Sultan Kudarat and Sultan Mastura towns in Maguindanao del Norte. Salliman is the son of Basilan Vice Gov. Hadjiman Salliman. The maternal grandfather of the now-parliament member Salliman is the late Simeon Datumanong, a lawyer and member of the government peace panel that crafted, in Tripoli, Libya, along with negotiators from the Moro National Liberation Front, the vaunted 1976 government-MNLF Tripoli Agreement. The 1976 government-MNLF Tripoli Agreement was to become the main reference in the crafting of the September 2, 1996 final peace compact between the MNLF and the national government. It was also used as a basis for the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The MILF shall be represented in the parliament by representatives elected last Monday as candidates of its regional political party, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party. A known Moro rights activist while still a college student, Zulfikar-Ali Bayam, is among the 16 elected BFP nominees for seats in the parliament. Macacua said he is certain that Bayam will stand for the rights of the Moro and non-Moro communities in the parliament. Local executives across BARMM belonging to the BFP are certain that the elected members of the region’s parliament will nominate Macacua as their chief minister during their first session as duly elected regional lawmakers.