Thousands join BARMM anniversary feast launching

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Employees of various Bangsamoro ministries started commemorating Saturday their regional government’s fourth founding anniversary where officials reassured support for Malacañang’s Mindanao peace process.

The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, whose charter, the Republic Act 11054, was ratified via a plebiscite in five provinces and three cities in Mindanao in January 2019, is a product of 22 years of peace talks between the national government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The BARMM replaced the 29-year now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in February 2019.

Thousands of employees of BARMM ministries paraded from the Sinsuat Avenue here to the regional capitol, 800 meters away, as salvo of their weeklong merrymaking, capped off with a parade of floats each representing an entity under the office of Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod Ebrahim.

Naguib Sinarimbo, local government minister of BARMM and regional spokesperson, and Ebrahim separately appreciated the participation in the activity of a number of foreigners representing international donor agencies involved in peace and development programs in the Bangsamoro region.

In a statement sent to reporters via online Messenger, a popular member of the 80-seat BARMM parliament, the physician Kadil Sinolinding, Jr., said the yearly anniversary celebration of the region’s creation ought to remind residents that they now enjoy self-governance based on a regional charter, the RA 11054.

“The BARMM was paid for with the blood and lives of thousands of Moro guerillas who fought it,” Sinolinding, most known by his moniker “doctor in the Bangsamoro parliament, said.

The Bangsamoro region covers the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Marawi, Lamitan and Cotabato.