Sectors in Basilan fuse ranks for safe, clean 2025 polls

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The 2025 elections are still five months away but the local communities in Basilan are, this early, plotting a multi-sector  initiative meant to ensure its orderly, peaceful and clean conduct in the island province.

Officials of the Army’s 101st Infantry Brigade, the Basilan provincial police, personnel of line agencies and Bangsamoro ministries in the province and representatives of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front signed on Thursday, December 12, in Lamitan City, an agreement to cooperate in ensuring a peaceful and honest electoral exercise in the province next year.

In the forefront of the activity is the United States Institute of Peace, or USIP, led by its director for Strategic Communications and Capability Building Project, Aliah Adam, and top officials of the police and the military in Basilan.

The signatories to the manifesto first planned a common multi-sector election security program, under the auspices of the Commission on Elections, during a forum at the Lamitan City government's gymnasium, jointly facilitated by the 101st Infantry Brigade, which is led by Army Brig. Gen. Alvin Luzon, the USIP and the units in the province of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region.

Basilan’s acting election supervisor, the lawyer Muamar Guyo, and provincial officials of the Bangsamoro education ministry also participated in the activity, where representatives of the MILF and the MILF had separately pledged to help the police, the military and the Commission on Elections maintain law and order in the province during the election period.

Participants to the forum, among them representatives from the Philippine Coast Guard, police officials and local community leaders also activated, during their gathering on Thursday, multi-sector quick reaction teams and  election monitoring action centers to help address election-related security issues in the province.

Police Brig. Gen. Romeo Juan Macapaz, director of PRO-BAR, and regional officials of the Comelec in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao told reporters on Saturday that they are grateful to Luzon and his subordinate-officers in the 101st Infantry Brigade and the USIP for embarking on the peace forum, something that they want done too in other BARMM provinces.