BULUAN, Maguindanao”•The Bangsamoro Basic Law will be lost after the tenure of President Rodrigo Duterte, Moro Islamic Liberation Front Vice Chairman Ghazzali Jaafar said Tuesday.
“After President Duterte, the BBL is lost,” Jaafar told the House Committees on Muslim Affairs, Peace and Reconciliation and Local Governments represented by Tawi-Tawi Rep. Ruby Sahali, Zajid Mangudadatu (Maguindanao), Leopoldo Bataoil (Pangasinan), Teddy Bagilat (Ifugao) and Jesus Sacdalan (Cotabato).
Jaafar said Duterte had the political will and better understanding of the Bangsamoro question being a “political issue that called for a genuine political solution, which is now the BBL.”
Sahali said the hearing here on Thursday was the fifth leg of a series of public consultation hearings on the BBL. The joint Committees, she said, had conducted 15 prior meetings.
Jaafar found an ally in Bagilat who, despite being an occasional Duterte critic, said the BBL had “better chances of being passed now than in the previous administration.”
He said the employees of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao would be treated fairly in terms of benefits entitlement and preference for rehiring once the region was dissolved and replaced by a Bangsamoro Government.
“The BBL does not say who can be or who cannot be part of this government. Everybody is welcome,” Jaafar said.
“Neither the struggle nor the BBL belong to me alone, neither does it belong to Murad, nor to Iqbal. They belong to you, the Bangsamoro people.”
Jaafar said the MILF forces were “not tired yet of waging the war in asserting their right to self-determination.”
But he was quick to add that the parties negotiating peace should “strengthen dialogue because dialogue has always been the strength of our forebears.”
He urged the lawmakers to “balance the matter concerning constitutionality with the general interest of achieving a solution to a political problem with the BBL [as the potential solution in sight].
“The BBL is a political solution to a political problem, Jaafar said.
“The people want to assert their right to self-determination. The government has asked for this peace negotiation but there has to be a BBL enacted into law,”