Commander Bravo joins BARMM transition team

From the Manila Times (Feb 23, 2019): Commander Bravo joins BARMM transition team

COTABATO CITY: Public officials have found acceptable the inclusion of the feared warrior of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Abdullah Macapaar or Commander Bravo, as one of 80 members of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA).

Al-Hajj Murad Ibrahim, MILF chairman and in-coming chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), announced that Macapaar was among the 41 members the MILF endorsed for the incoming BTA.

The National Bureau of Investigation had reportedly cleared Macapaar of involvement in any criminal case that could be a legal ground for President Rodrigo Duterte not to appoint him as BTA member.

Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, also a strong supporter of the peace efforts of Malacañang and the MILF, said he was in favor of Macapaar’s participation in governance after he fought the government for more than three decades.

Mangudadatu said Duterte and the MILF’s top leadership core must have agreed bilaterally to Macapaar’s inclusion in the BTA.

“President Duterte knows best. We believe in his sincerity in resolving the Moro issue. We believe in his propensity to address concerns and issues regarding the peace process,” he said.

“Commander Bravo now wants to get involved in governance as the better means of addressing the problems besetting the Bangsamoro homeland. What is wrong with that? We should be happy that from being a warrior he would be working in the BTA as statesman,” Mangudadatu added.

Macapaar, a Maranao, and radical cleric Ameril Ombra Kato, a Maguindanaon, led bloody attacks in the provinces of Lanao del Norte and in North Cotabato, after the Supreme Court declared as unconstitutional the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain in 2008 that Malacañang and the MILF crafted the year before.

The document was the supposed basis for the creation of a Bangsamoro political entity.

But the Supreme Court threw out the draft agreement based on petitions by various groups and political leaders, citing the unconstitutionality of many of its provisions.

Kato, whom the MILF central committee censured for leading a mutiny in protest of the Supreme Court’s decision, bolted in 2009 and organized the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) a year later.

The BIFF, blamed for all the fatal bombings since, has declared allegiance to the Islamic State (IS).

The peace talks between the government and the MILF, which started on Jan. 7, 1997, culminated with the crafting on March 27, 2014 of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).

The CAB was the basis for the passage of the Republic Act 11054, or the “Bangsamoro Organic Law” (BOL), the charter of BARMM.

The BOL will pave the way for the replacement of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) with the MILF-led BARMM.

The BTA, which Ebrahim will lead as chief minister, will manage the transfer of powers from ARMM to BARMM.

The BTA shall be comprised of 41 representatives from the MILF, among them Macapaar, and 39 members from the government.

Similarly, outgoing ARMM regional governor Mujiv Hataman, said there was nothing wrong with Macapaar being included in the BTA,
saying that the MILF leadership functions as a collegial body.

https://www.manilatimes.net/commander-bravo-joins-barmm-transition-team/515752/