5 lawyers, physician among MILF representatives to Bangsamoro parliament

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Five lawyers and a physician belonging to the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP) of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have been elected as members of the 80-seat Bangsamoro regional parliament. They will commence their collaborative work starting October 30. The first-ever parliamentary elections in the now seven-year-old Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), covering five provinces and three cities, were administered just last Monday, September 14, by the Commission on Elections with the help of different units of the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police. The doctor of medicine Lampa Pandi, who had served as three-term mayor of Poona Bayabao town in Lanao del Sur, was elected representative of one of the nine parliamentary districts in their province. "The elections in my district were peaceful and orderly. Me and my supporters are grateful to poll officials, the teachers, the personnel of the police and military who cooperated in facilitating the electoral exercise in our district," Pandi told reporters on Friday, September 18. Pandi also had a long stint as a senior official in the regional health department of the now-defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which was established in 1992 and, subsequently, replaced with a more politically and administratively empowered Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in 2019. The lawyers John Anthony Lim, who hails from Tawi-Tawi and has been an appointed member of the parliament since 2022, was elected as a nominee for the UBJP’s group representation in the parliament, along with Sheriff Abas, Sha Elijah Dumama-Alba and Raissa Jajurie. The lawyers Dumama-Alba and Jajurie are also both appointed members of the interim parliament. Jajurie, as an appointed regional lawmaker, is overseeing the Ministry of Social Services and Development-BARMM in a concurrent capacity. Abas, who is from a big Moro clan in Maguindanao del Norte province, was a former chairman of the Commission on Elections. The UBJP has won 15 seats for its bloc nominees for the 80-seat parliament, among them the chairman of the MILF’s central committee, Ahod Ebrahim, who was BARMM’s appointed chief minister from 2019 to March 2025. The fifth lawyer from the UBJP, Arnado, was elected on September 14 as representative to the parliament of the settler communities, or non-indigenous groups, in all of the autonomous region's five provinces, Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi and three cities, Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, where the BARMM capitol is located. The Tausug Lim, also spokesperson of the parliament for more than a year now, and Pandi, who is of Maranao descent, separately told reporters on Friday they want parliament members belonging to the UBJP, the Bangsamoro Federalist Party and all other blocs to unite and together work in furthering peace and sustainable development in BARMM. "We can boost the spread of peace and development to all provinces and cities in the Bangsamoro region if we are united despite our different political identities," Pandi said. Lim said the duly elected members of the BARMM parliament ought to protect, as lawmakers, the dividends of the Mindanao peace process, the most tangible of which is the creation of BARMM, whose setup was together designed by Moro and government peace brokers. Lim said officials of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a group of more than 50 Muslim states, including petroleum-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa, will surely feel good seeing all sectors in the autonomous region together in sustaining self-governance in the autonomous region via the BARMM regional government. Member-states of the OIC helped broker Malacañang’s separate peace compacts with the MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front that both fought for self-governance by the southern Moro communities in the context of Philippine sovereignty.