ARMM to continue reforms

COTABATO CITY, Philippines -- Employees of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao will continue to pursue reforms  despite the ARMM’s seemingly imminent deactivation in 2015 to pave the way for the creation of a new Bangsamoro political entity.

The envisioned Bangsamoro outfit is to be established by the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front --- through an enabling law  ----  as paramount objective of the now 16-year old GPH-MILF talks.

ARMM officials held a workshop  from July 19 to 21 in Tagaytay City to improve the delivery of services to local communities in the next 48 months, before the region could be phased out and replaced with an MILF-led Bangsamoro government.

Amir Mawalil, managing chief of the Regional Communications Group, said the three-day activity was sponsored by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and facilitated by the Development Academy of the Philippines.

Mawalil said more than a hundred ARMM officials and representatives of different civil society organizations  attended the workshop.

Antonio Kalaw Jr., president of DAP, said the three-day workshop was essential to the efforts of the administration of ARMM Governor Mujiv Hataman to imrpove the ARMM’s public service while preparing for the possible creation of the Bangsamoro entity in 2015.

“We all know that the next two-and-a-half years are crucial to the region,” Kalaw was quoted by Mawalil as saying during one of the sessions in their Tagaytay workshop.

Amihilda Sangcopan, Hataman’s chief-of-staff, said the governor  and his constituent-officials, with “remaining little time,” are to prove, through good governance, that the ARMM is not a “failed experiment” after all.

Effective regional governance, vital political interventions, and peace and security issues and the socio-economic woes that need to be addressed before 2015 were discussed extensively during the workshop, according to Sangcopan.

Workshop participants, among them Hataman, who was elected regional governor during the May 13 elections, and ARMM Vice-Gov. Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, drafted during the workshop a regional comprehensive public services convergence program for 2013.  - John Unson