COTABATO City—Close to 90,000 people gathered at the Grand Mosque here to protest alleged widespread rumors on social media that is sowing division among top leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Sammy Gambar, chief of the MILF’s Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Force (BIAF), said the purveyors of unconfirmed information, mostly through the internet, could be conveying the false idea that there was squabbling within the MILF hierarchy
Addressing the rally, Gambar pledged unwavering loyalty to MILF chieftain Al Haj Murad Ebrahim whom he succeeded as interim Chief Minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
Murad and Gambar have since dropped their nom-de-guerres and reverted to their actual names, as Ahod Ebrahim and Abdulraof Macacua, respectively when they assumed top positions in the BARMM.
Macacua clarified that said as the MILF’s chief of armed forces, he remains obedient to the chain of command and recognizes as his superior MILF chief Al Haj Murad Ebrahim whom he replaced as Chief Minister of the BARMM last March following the latter’s resignation
Since the BARMM change of command last March, Ibrahim has reverted back to his nom-de-guerre as chairman of the MILF. Iqbal, for his part, has retained his revolutionary name within and outside the MILF Central Committee.
Iqbal’s purported followers swarned the social media with exaggerations and factual comments alike, including a recall of the repartee with Senator Alan Peter Cayetano during Senate hearings on the 2015 Mamasapano incident which nearly brought the peace process in Mindanao to the brinks of collapse.
“Even my name is being ridiculed on social media by people who do not really know the goings-on in the BARMM, such as a current special audit in the education agency: the grapevine would go by sarcastic labeling, even by making fun of COA (Commission on Audit) and relating it to ridicule my name,” Macacua lamented.
“That is foul already. But a Muslim should be soft to Muslims, and cordial even to an unbelieving enemy,” he added.
“But I tell you, the three of us are communicating well,” he said, referring to himself as well as to MILF chairman Ibrahim and First Vice-Chairman Mohagher Iqbarl.
To prove his point, Gambar said Murad had called him up on phone recently to tell him that the chairman was lifting a suspension order he had issued on MILF base commanders, reportedly for joining a meeting in Manila in relation to the decommissioning process for former combatants hosted by the Office of the Presidential Adviser in the Peace Process Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPPRU).
Macacua explained that the MILF commanders’ trip to Manila in August was sponsored by the BARMM Ministry of the Interior and Local Government (MILG), which he concurrently heads, and not by OPAPPRU—“because the agency saw the need to capacitate them as revolutionary leaders in field of local governance.”
He said when Murad knew about the true information about the travel of the MILF commanders to Manila the latter promptly called (Macacua) to tell him that: “If that (Manila travel) was your order, I am lifting the suspension order (on the commanders) in connection with the same travel.” The MILF forces in the rally lauded this line.
“You see what reaching out to the other side could do to help clear the flow of communication muddled by ‘Marites’,” Macacua pointed out.
Macacua said “unfair decisions” are often made of “unverified information, wrong fed,” adding that: “some consequences of wrong decisions could inflict damage that is irreparable.”
The BARMM was created in 2019 under Republic Act 11054 (Bangsamoro Organic Law).
