BARMM elections proceed with Sara Duterte impeachment trial largely ignored

CAGAYAN DE ORO, Philippines – The ongoing impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte has become one of the country’s biggest political showdowns, but in the Bangsamoro, where voters head to the polls next week, it appears to have become something many of its politicians would rather not talk about. With Duterte still retaining a relatively strong national following and the impeachment proceedings putting her at odds with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and groups seeking her removal, politicians and political parties in the Bangsamoro region have largely avoided making the trial an issue in the region’s first parliamentary election, set for Monday, September 14. Instead, candidates and political operators have mostly kept their options open, content to watch from the sidelines as the impeachment trial and the fight between the pro- and anti-Duterte camps unfold, at least until the votes are counted. ‘Playing safe’ “Not much on the politicians, parang playing safe sila (it seems they are playing safe),” said Drieza Lininding, chairman of the Lanao del Sur-based Moro Consensus Group (MCG). He said that some, like Lanao del Sur 1st District Representative Zia Adiong, are outspoken Duterte critics, “but many tend to wait and see how the impeachment will turn out.” Adiong, a spokesman for the prosecution team in Duterte’s impeachment trial, is one of the more prominent exceptions. But his position has not necessarily translated into a broader political alignment in his province, including Marawi City, and across the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). The congressman is not running for a post in the BARMM regional government but his nephew Abdul Raul is seeking a seat in Lanao del Sur’s 3rd District, while another Adiong, Rashdi, is campaigning for a similar position in the 9th District. The Adiongs, who supported what became the successful presidential bid of Marcos in 2022, have fielded candidates in the various parliamentary districts in Lanao del Sur and elsewhere in the BARMM through the Serbisyong Inklusibo-Alyansang Progresibo Party (SIAP). Rappler sought comment from Adiong and three other politicians from competing political parties in the BARMM on Wednesday, September 9. None responded by the time of posting. For Lininding, the bigger question may come after the September 14 vote. If political forces aligned with Marcos lose, he said, some could blame the president and subsequently look to Duterte. “The losing parties might blame PBBM (Marcos) and lean on VP Sara to exact political revenge,” Lininding said. That suggests political fights at the national level do not necessarily dictate political choices in BARMM. It remains to be seen, but past elections have shown that predominantly Muslim areas in Mindanao are not politically uniform, and Duterte’s popularity may not automatically translate to votes for candidates in the parliamentary election. Unlikely factor Liezl Bugtay, deputy executive director of Climate Conflict Action Asia (CCAA), said the ongoing impeachment trial appears to have largely been absent from political discussions among voters, candidates, and parties in the BARMM. “The ongoing impeachment trial won’t likely factor in the outcome of the BARMM elections,” Bugtay told Rappler. “It seems like it’s a non-issue in the region at this time.” Candidates, she said, have generally not been tackling the impeachment in their campaign sorties, while voters appear to regard Duterte’s trial as separate from the election of the Bangsamoro parliament. That distinction matters because the BARMM election is taking place against a political history in which national alliances have not always mapped neatly onto regional loyalties. The political fault lines in the Bangsamoro looked different in 2022. The contrast was striking. Take, for instance, Abdulraof Macacua, then a senior BARMM minister and head of the MILF’s armed wing, who is said to have backed Marcos in the 2022 elections. Yet his superior at the time and predecessor, then-interim chief minister Ahod “Al Haj Murad” Ebrahim, openly supported former vice president Leni Robredo. When the votes were counted, Murad and the MILF’s open endorsement did not translate to a Robredo victory. Marcos won with more than one million votes in the BARMM, more than twice Robredo’s total. Duterte, Marcos’ running mate in 2022, also won in the BARMM by a landslide, including Sulu, which was then still part of the region. Macacua, currently the interim chief minister, is running for a parliamentary district seat in Maguindanao del Norte under the Bangsamoro Federal Party (BFP), while Murad is the top nominee of the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), the political arm of the MILF. Both played key roles in the MILF’s decades-long struggle for Bangsamoro autonomy and self-determination. If they make it in the September 14 polls, they could find themselves competing directly for the post of chief minister, bringing into the electoral arena a rivalry rooted in their long transition from armed struggle to political power. Still, the Duterte factor The lesson from the upcoming election may not be that Duterte’s popularity is irrelevant. Rather, her popularity alone may not determine how BARMM voters cast their ballots on Monday. Traditional politicians in the region have often aligned themselves with the administration in power. Many of those political networks remain focused on local alliances, family interests, and access to government resources rather than political battles playing out hundreds of kilometers away in Manila. Still, the Duterte factor endures. Lininding said many Meranaw in Lanao del Sur openly support Duterte, a sentiment he sees in many online political discussions. He also pointed to Senator Robinhood Padilla, a hard-line Duterte supporter and the Senate’s only Muslim member. Padilla’s political prominence gives the Duterte camp a foothold among Muslim voters in the national legislature. A former convict who converted to Islam and was granted an absolute pardon during the presidency of Sara’s father, Rodrigo Duterte, Padilla became the first Muslim senator since the late Santanina Rasul, who left office in 1995 after becoming the first Muslim woman elected to the Philippine Senate in 1987. Not taking sides – yet The disconnect is striking given that Sara Duterte remains popular in the Muslim-majority region, as she does in many parts of Mindanao, yet her ongoing impeachment trial has barely figured in the campaign for seats in the Bangsamoro parliament. That could change, however, after the votes are counted next week. Monday’s election will be the first parliamentary contest since the Bangsamoro region was created in 2019, determining who controls the legislature and who becomes its first elected chief minister. But, for now, BARMM’s politicians and parties appear less interested in taking sides in the battle over the vice presidency.