-Thus said Mohagher M. Iqbal, in his reaction to several social media posts about a political coalition among four political parties in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
Iqbal used to be the Minister of Basic, Higher, and Technical Education during the transition period. To recall, he was ousted rather unceremoniously from this post after a new interim chief minister was installed and appointed by President Marcos.
An ideologue and key member of the Central Committee of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Iqbal also heads the MILF Peace Implementing Panel, which was organized after the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB). The CAB is the main reason for the establishment of the BARMM, the new autonomous region that replaced the defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. For almost two decades, Iqbal headed the MILF peace negotiating panel in the painstaking but landmark peace process between the MILF and the Philippine government. The CAB was signed in 2014, but the BARMM was only made fully operational starting early 2020, after a plebiscite ratified the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) that became the legal framework for the region’s creation.
The said posts, allegedly from supporters of one political party, claimed that a huge coalition of three political parties and two members of the Non-Moro Indigenous Peoples (NMIP) has been forged and that the members of the said coalition ‘… have already taken their oath, administered no less by the Supreme Court.’ In these posts, pictures of the leaders of the political parties are shown to have ‘forged the coalition,’ with pictures of leaders of the four political parties in one frame, as if the said coalition was already a done deal. It was made to appear that the different political parties that got Parliament seats in the Sept. 14 elections had decided together to be a ‘super’ majority in the forthcoming regular Parliament. The three political parties include the Bangsamoro Federalist Party (BFP), the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP) and the Serbisyong Inklusibo-Alyansang Progresibo, a political party associated with traditional politicians in Lanao del Sur.
In a statement released by the editorial desk of the Luwaran, the official information outlet of the MILF, Iqbal denied that the UBJP had already agreed to coalesce with three other political parties to form a ‘super’ majority party in the new Bangsamoro Parliament of 80 members.
In his characteristic sharp and terse remark, Iqbal reacted to the posts by summing up his denial saying, ‘nothing is over until it’s over…’ He reiterated his denial on his social media page.
The asymmetrically designed BARMM Parliament has 80 seats to be filled, but two of these have already been assigned prior to the first parliamentary elections. These are the seats reserved for NMIP in the BARMM from the Téduray and the Téduray-Lambangian groups, namely Jo Genna Jover and Leticio Datuwata.
After the controversial social media post was made public, the two issued a statement denying that they have joined any coalition, maintaining their independence, and that no political party ‘owns’ them. They strongly asserted that their mandate comes from their Indigenous Political Structure that nominated them for the two reserved seats, and not any political party.
Both BFP and UBJP figured in several preelection and election-related controversies, ranging from pre and postelection violent incidents that killed at least five and injured 43 people, mostly supporters of the UBJP, to ballot shading in the polls of different localities.
As the regional version of Mr. Marcos’ Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, the BFP ran a well-oiled and aggressive political campaign, and convinced some UBJP stalwarts to join it, including the new interim Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua. Macacua used to be the commander of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, the armed wing of the MILF, and was appointed governor of Maguindanao del Norte before he was appointed by Mr. Marcos as the new interim chief minister in March 2025.
All these have led to strained relationships between Macacua and the MILF, particularly with both the former interim Chief Minister Ahod B. Ebrahim, aka Al Haj Murad and Iqbal.
Consequently, the peace process mechanisms that were integral in the signing of the CAB and even in the provisions of the BOL came to a halt, abetted by the moves of some regional interlocutors who connived with key national officials close to Mr. Marcos to sow divisions among the MILF and eventually within the UBJP.