Emulation of Malaysian gov’t services in BARMM mulled

COTABATO CITY — Planners in the Bangsamoro Transportation and communications ministry are studying the viability of applying in the autonomous region the public service programs of Malaysia, most known in Southern Mindanao as Southeast Asia’s best.

Bangsamoro Transportation and Communications Minister Paisalin Pangandaman Tago told reporters in Cotabato City on Tuesday, October 1, that he and his subordinate-officials were so impressed by the Malaysian policies on airport and seaport management, which can be applied in the autonomous region.

Tago led the team from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that toured Malaysia last week and met Malaysian officials who, in dialogues, shared to them governance and public service insights.

“We are keen on adopting some of their governance and public services thrusts for regional application," Tago told reporters.

Tago, an accountant-lawyer, said BARMM, being autonomous in stature and run by a regional parliament, can use Malaysian examples as its basis for improving its public service, community-empowerment, health and social welfare thrusts.

While in Malaysia, Tago, MoTC-BARMM’s deputy minister, Muhammad Ameen Abbas, and directors of different offices in their ministry met with officials of the Malaysian Ministry of Transportation, the Tabung Haji, and the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies.

The Tabung Haji is an agency focused on facilitating savings, through investments, for the yearly pilgrimage of Malaysians to Makkah in Saudi Arabia and also has programs promoting finance, health, property and information technologies.

Malaysia, a member-state of the influential Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) helped facilitate, as mediator, the peace talks between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or MILF, that lasted for two decades and led to the crafting by both sides of two compacts, the 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro and the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro.

The two peace accords were the basis for setting up in 2019 of BARMM, via a plebiscite, replacing the then 27-year less empowered and now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The OIC is a bloc of more than 50 Muslim countries, including petroleum-exporting states in the Middle East and North Africa. It also brokered the Sept. 2, 1996 final truce between Malacañang and the Moro National Liberation Front, whose leaders are presently helping BARMM's MILF-dominated parliament manage some of the ministries of the autonomous regional government. 

Tago said they also admire the Malaysian government’s programs promoting cultural and religious solidarity among Malaysians.

“There is that cordial bond among Muslims and non-Muslims there. They have ethnic Malaysians, Chinese and Indian communities that are close with each other, not separated by cultural and religious barriers, but united, respectful of one another’s diversities,” Tago said.

BARMM, covering the provinces of Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato also has ethno-linguistics groups scattered in culturally-pluralistic domains.