Two Christian governors in Region 12 and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) have pledged their support for the community-empowerment programs of the Bangsamoro government’s chief minister, who will continue serving under an extended tenure as a presidential appointee.
Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza and her counterpart in South Cotabato, Reynaldo Tamayo Jr. separately told reporters on Monday, November 10, that they will remain supportive of the public service thrusts of Abdulrauf Macacua, who shall still function as chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao following the postponement of the supposed Oct.13, 2024, first-ever BARMM parliamentary elections due to legal impediments.
Macacua is chief of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, whose 2014 peace compact with the national government led to the creation in 2019 of the MILF-led BARMM, replacing the then 27-year-old, less empowered Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
BARMM Labor and Employment Minister Muslimin Sema, chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front that forged on Sept. 2, 1996 a truce with the national government, said MNLF members and leaders in all five provinces and three cities in the autonomous region are glad with Macacua’s stay as an appointed figurehead of the 80-member Bangsamoro parliament and all ministries and support agencies of the autonomous regional government.
‘Chief Minister Macacua has our solid vote of confidence. We will support his leadership of the Bangsamoro region, under an appointive authority, until the Commission on Elections sets the final schedule of the first-ever parliamentary polls in the region,’ Sema said.
Both the MILF and MNLF have representatives in the Bangsamoro parliament and are cooperating in managing certain agencies of the regional government.
Macacua was appointed as chief minister of BARMM just last March 2025 by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., replacing Ahod Ebrahim, chairman of the MILF’s central committee, who was appointed to the same post in 2019 by then President Rodrigo Duterte.
There are 63 predominantly Moro barangays in Cotabato, Region 12, now organized into eight towns established by the Bangsamoro Parliament last year. The area falls under the jurisdiction of Taliño-Mendoza, who also serves as chairperson of the multi-sector Regional Development Council 12, which oversees development initiatives across four provinces and three cities in Central Mindanao.
‘These barangays, grouped as the Bangsamoro Special Geographic Area, are no longer under my jurisdiction but me and all my constituent mayors will continue cooperating with the development initiatives of the Bangsamoro government for the Moro communities there because they remain connected geographically to our province. They remain as our constituents still because their ancestral domains are inside our province,’ Taliño-Mendoza said.
Tamayo, now in his third term as governor of South Cotabato and was recently reappointed by Marcos as presiding chairperson of the multi-sector Regional Peace and Order Council 12, said his office will help the Macacua-led BARMM government push forward its humanitarian programs for the Moro communities in all of the 10 municipalities in their province and in its capital, Koronadal City.
‘Different Bangsamoro ministries are extending services to Moro residents of South Cotabato, which is outside of the Bangsamoro region. We shall reciprocate by supporting the peace and security programs of the Bangsamoro government, complementing the peace overtures of President Marcos with the MILF and the MNLF that have members residing in South Cotabato,” Tamayo said.