BARMM, Christian-majority province strengthen peace efforts

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The Christian governor of South Cotabato province in Region 12 and the chief minister of the Bangsamoro region met on Wednesday, November 4, and agreed to expand their cooperation on activities essential to sustaining the gains of the national government’s Mindanao peace process.

Gov. Reynaldo Tamayo Jr. visited on Wednesday Bangsamoro Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua at the capitol of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in Cotabato City and, while there, assured to continue supporting the peacebuilding programs of the BARMM government complementing the peace overtures of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. with Moro communities.

Macacua was elected as a member of the 80-seat BARMM parliament during the region’s September 14 elections and was, subsequently, nominated as regular chief minister of Bangsamoro government during its inaugural session on Friday last week. He served as an interim Bangsamoro chief minister, as a presidential appointee, from 2025 until he was elected as a parliament member during the autonomous region's September 14 first-ever parliamentary polls.  

Tamayo, now in his third and last term as South Cotabato governor, is the chairperson of the multi-sector Regional Peace and Development Council 12, covering four provinces and four cities in Region 12, where there are members of the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which have separate peace agreements with the national government.

There are also big Moro communities in Region 12, many of which are led by datus related to traditional figureheads of Moro clans in two BARMM provinces in mainland Mindanao, Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur.

“We ought to support the peacebuilding and socio-economic programs of the Bangsamoro government because trading centers in our province are, in many ways, connected to the trading centers in Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur,” said Tamayo, national president of the country's league of provincial governors.

He said he will try to convince members of the league to entice their constituent-traders to expand their businesses in the five provinces and three cities in BARMM.

Koronadal City in South Cotabato is the administrative seat of Region 12, where many regional offices of different line agencies have employees who were originally residents of Cotabato City, the region’s former capital, and relocated to the area after the creation of BARMM in 2019.

Cotabato City became the capital of BARMM after residents voted in favor of the inclusion of its 37 barangays into the autonomous region’s core territory during a plebiscite in 2019 that resulted in the ratification of the Bangsamoro region’s charter, Republic Act 11054, also known as the Bangsamoro Organic Law.

“We appreciate the continuing connectivity of the communities in our provinces in mainland Mindanao with the communities in South Cotabato and Cotabato provinces in Region 12, sustained with the help of these two provincial governments that are both under Region 12," Macacua said.

Macacua said Tamayo and his counterpart in Cotabato province, Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, chairperson of multi-sectoral Regional Development Council 12, both have extensive public service thrusts in Moro communities in towns under their jurisdiction.

There are 63 predominantly Moro barangays in Cotabato province, grouped together in 2019 as the Bangsamoro Special Geographic area, under the autonomous regional government since, but are inside the territory of Region 12.  

“The provincial government of Cotabato has not stopped from providing the Moro people in the Bangsamoro Special Geographic area with humanitarian services even if no longer under its jurisdiction,” Macacua said, referring to the 63 barangays that were originally in the territory of different towns under the administration of Taliño-Mendoza, now in her second term as Cotabato provincial governor.

Macacua said he has a plan to organize a small team that shall function as a conduit of the BARMM parliament to the offices of Tamayo and Talino-Mendoza in the cities of Koronadal and Kidapawan, respectively.