Thousands join convoy to show support for Bangsamoro law

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Thousands of vehicles on Sunday motored through two cities and three provinces in a 16-hour motorcade meant to demonstrate public support for the Bangsamoro Organic Law.

The Commission on Elections will administer the plebscite in most areas of the proposed Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao on January 21. Another plebiscite is scheduled on February 6 for the expanded areas, including six towns in Lanao del Norte and villages in North Cotabato.

The “caravan for peace,” organized by various blocs helping push the peace process between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front forward, was launched here after dawn Sunday.

The motorcade crossed through Tacurong City and in towns in Sultan Kudarat, in North Cotabato and in Maguindanao provinces before returning to its point of origin.

The motorists were comprised of central Mindanao’s Muslim, Christian and Lumad residents, the primary stakeholders in the peace process.

Senior police and Army officials in central Mindanao, among them Col. Markton Abo, civil-military relations officer of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, estimated that around 20,000 cars, sports utility vehicles, cargo trucks and motorcycles joined the caravan.

Thousands of residents, among them pupils of elementary schools and high schools positioned along the highway, greeted the motorists with streamers and flaglets bearing messages of support for BOL.

The Commission on Elections will administer the BOL plebiscite in the 118 towns in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, in parts of Lanao del Norte and North Cotabato provinces and in the cities of Cotabato and Isabela, to determine if voters there are amenable to being grouped together under a Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or BARMM, which will initially be led by the MILF.

Once ratified via a plebiscite, the BOL shall pave the way for ARMM’s replacement with a BARMM, based on two peace compacts between the government and the MILF – the 2012 Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro and 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.

Peace talks between the government and the MILF started on January 7, 1997 and spanned through the terms of four presidents–Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Benigno Aquino III.

Although the agreements were signed during the Aquino administration, it failed to pass the BOL, which would have implemented the CAB.

President Rodrigo Duterte, the country's first Mindanaon president, managed to shepherd the law through Congress.