MILF cites non-Moro governor’s support to peace process

March 29, 2024 | 5:59pm

COTABATO CITY — The Moro Islamic Liberation Front on Wednesday awarded a non-Muslim governor of a province outside of the Bangsamoro region a special citation for supporting the peace overture between the MILF and Malacañang since its inception in 1997.

Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza received the award from two senior MILF officials, Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod Ebrahim and Regional Education Minister Muhaquer Iqbal, during Wednesday’s commemoration in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte of the 10th anniversary of the crafting of the final compact between the front and Malacañang, the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro or CAB.

Mendoza, presiding chairperson of the multi-sector and inter-agency Regional Development Council 12, operating under the auspices of the National Economic Development Authority 12, has been supporting the government-MILF peace overture since it started on Jan. 7, 1997.

“I’m thankful for this award. It is a strong advocacy for me to be of help, in my little ways, in addressing the Mindanao Moro issue. I have seen the devastation caused by armed conflicts in different towns in Cotabato province in the past decades. Let us together nurture the gains of the Mindanao peace process,” Mendoza told reporters via text message on Thursday.

Ebrahim, who presided over Wednesday’s activity in Camp Darapanan in Sultan Kudarat, is chairman of the MILF’s central committee and an appointed figurehead of the 80-member regional parliament of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

Regional officials, representatives of the Armed Forces, the Philippine National Police, peace advocates, foreign dignitaries, Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity Carlito Galvez Jr. and other officials under the office of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. attended the event.

The national government and the MILF forged in Malacañang the CAB on March 27, 2014, a product of two decades of tedious negotiations that paved the way for the replacement, via a plebiscite in early 2019, of the then 27-year Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with a more empowered BARMM.

BARMM officials and representatives of the MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front, who are at the helm of different agencies in the regional government, among them Labor and Employment Minister Muslimin Sema, told reporters that Mendoza deserved the special award in recognition of her contributions, despite her being non-Moro, to the closure of the decades-old quest for self-governance of the southern Moro community. 

“Her administration and the mayors under her are actively providing essential services to MILF and MNLF communities in Cotabato province,” Sema, chairman of the MNLF’s central committee, said.

A popular member of the BARMM parliament, the physician-ophthalmologist Kadil Sinolinding Jr., on Thursday said that Mendoza’s office has not stopped attending to the needs of  the residents of 63 Bangsamoro barangays in different towns in Cotabato that got fused with the core territory of the autonomous region as a result of the peace process.

“I have many relatives and friends in these Bangsamoro barangays, who, along with so many others, thousands of them, who continue to benefit from the services of the Cotabato provincial government even if they are in barangays that are no longer part of the province administratively,” Sinolinding said.