The children of members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) are voicing their dismay over the Supreme Court’s decision to exclude Sulu from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). For many of these individuals, whose parents perished in the battles of the 1970s, the ruling has come as a bitter blow.
On Monday, members of the MNLF Women’s Committee and the Anak MNLF Members Group from Sulu and the remaining five provinces of the Bangsamoro region expressed their disappointment across various radio stations in Mindanao. They reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision, which was made in response to a petition by Governor Hadji Abdusakur Tan. Tan had opposed the inclusion of Sulu in the autonomous region.
Farserina Mohammad, a senior official of both the MNLF Women’s Committee and the Anak MNLF Members Group, underscored that the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was the result of extensive negotiations between the Moro communities in Mindanao and the Malacañang Palace. Mohammad and her colleagues emphasized that Sulu was a significant battleground during the 1970s, where government troops clashed with MNLF guerrillas fighting for peace and development within the context of autonomy and self-rule in some Mindanao provinces.
Governor Tan’s request to the Supreme Court to exclude Sulu from the BARMM came after the province’s voters rejected the proposal in a 2019 plebiscite. This plebiscite was associated with the congressional proposal that led to Republic Act 11054, which ultimately established the BARMM.
Mohammad argued that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government should have considered that despite the governor’s petition, the establishment of the BARMM—following the dissolution of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)—was the result of a peace process championed jointly by the national government and member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The exclusion of Sulu from the BARMM has left many feeling that the peace process and their sacrifices have not been fully acknowledged or valued.
