“This is a historic event when people truly assert a participatory democratic right, as you see them troop early in the morning to the polling precincts,” said Professor Rufa Cagoco-Guiam, a resident analyst of the Institute for Autonomy and Governance, based in Cotabato City.
READ: MILF forces fan out to enter Cotabato; AFP steps in
Guiam, also former editor of the Catholic-run The Mindanao Cross, notes that generally, Moro voters in most past elections were dictated upon by their leaders on how they should vote. This is no longer the case, she said, as people are strongly motivated to achieve peace and justice.
House Deputy Speaker Bai Sandra Sema, who represents Maguindanao and Cotabato City in the House of Representatives, said she voted “yes,” though quite late because policemen servers were stricter after replacing 72 teachers in 240 precincts, who had backed out of poll duty after they received threatening text messages.
For “yes” voters, affixing their fingerprints, writing a three-letter word, and casting their ballots represented bold steps to achieve self-determination and autonomy never before experienced.
Moro people were joined by Christian residents twice in Cotabato City for peace assemblies urging residents to ratify the Bangsamoro Organic Law, which will establish the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in the place of the present Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, as a way through achieving lasting peace—and substantially, the Moro people’s right to self-determination.
READ: Bangsamoro in crucial vote
On Jan. 18, they were joined by MILF Chairman Hadji Murad Ibrahim, First Vice-Chairman Ghazzali Jaafar, Vice Chairman Mohaguer Iqbal and MILF Military Chief Sammy Gambar al-Mansoor in a huge Peace Assembly, hours before President Rodrigo Duterte arrived at the Shariff Kabunsuan Cultural Center in Cotabato City.
Local religious leaders like Cardinal Quevedo OMI, DD declared support for the ratification of the BOL. Pastor Troy Eric Cordero, a Protestant preacher, openly campaigned in Cotabato City villages to vote “yes.”
But Cotabato City Mayor Cynthia Guiani Sayadi openly declared she voted “no” as she emerged from the voting precinct at the Cotabato City Institute, a few meters from the Guiani ancestral home in Cotabato City.
The “no” vote is founded on two political grounds: 1) Cotabato City is a chartered city established as a common market shared by the Moros, the Christian settlers, the Indigenous People’s (IP) tribes and old resident Chinese-Filipinos, enjoying political parity. Thus, any new political order that will favor or elevate one of these groups permanently to a new dominant political status will alter this old prevailing order; and 2) the assertion of the Sulu Sultanate of the Bangsa Sug (Sulu Nation) which existed almost 500 years before Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram entered into and signed the Kiram-Bates Treaty which used the term “Moro” as an integral identity of all the Muslim tribes in Mindanao and Sulu, and by which the Moro Province was created in 1903.
Former governor Sakur Tan Sr. filed the petition questioning the constitutionality of the BOL, enacted by Congress as Republic Act 11054. The Supreme Court has incorporated another petition filed by the Philippine Constitutional Association (Philconsa) with Tan’s petition—which has been raffled to the Third Division under Associate Justice Marvic Leonen. But Leonen’s division has not issued a temporary restraining order to stop the plebiscite days set on Jan. 21 and Feb. 6.
In previous plebiscites, Christian voters were easily swayed by inherent biases against a Muslim leadership when the administration of President Corazon Aquino created the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, as part of the 1987 Constitution and enacted by Congress in Republic Act 6734 in 1988 which was ratified by only four provinces—Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi (out of the proposed 13 provinces under the 1976 Tripoli Agreement)—in a plebiscite held on Feb. 7, 1989.
