Cultural solidarity seen in BARMM anniversary festivities 

COTABATO CITY - The celebration of the 4^th founding anniversary of the Bangsamoro region was a showcase of the gains of self-governance under the now four-year autonomous regional government covering five provinces and three cities.

Observers, among them local executives in provinces outside of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, had, in fact, expressed oneness with BARMM government officials and their constituents in their anniversary festivities.

“We are thankful, grateful to all those who helped make our anniversary events successful,” BARMM’s regional spokesperson, the Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo, said Thursday.

The Ministry of the Interior and Local Government, the office of Senior Minister Abdulraof Macacua and officials of other ministries under the office of Chief Minister Ahod Ebrahim together managed the activities that capped off the weeklong BARMM anniversary event.

Employees of various Bangsamoro ministries started commemorating Saturday, January 21, their regional government’s fourth founding anniversary.

Regional officials reassured, in separate messages then, their support for Malacañang’s Mindanao peace process.

The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, whose charter, the Republic Act 11054, was ratified via a plebiscite in five provinces and three cities in Mindanao in January 2019, is a product of 22 years of peace talks between the national government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The BARMM replaced the 29-year now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in February 2019.

Thousands of employees of BARMM ministries paraded from the Sinsuat Avenue here to the regional capitol, 800 meters away, as salvo of their weeklong merrymaking, capped off with a parade of floats each representing an entity of the regional government.

Sinarimbo and Ebrahim separately expressed gratitude for the participation in the activity of a number of foreigners representing international donor agencies involved in peace and development programs in the Bangsamoro region.

In a statement sent to reporters via online Messenger, a popular member of the 80-seat BARMM parliament, the physician Kadil Sinolinding, Jr., said the yearly anniversary celebration of the region’s creation ought to remind residents that they now enjoy self-governance based on a regional charter, the RA 11054.

“The BARMM was paid for with the blood and lives of thousands of Moro guerillas who fought it,” Sinolinding, most known by his moniker “doctor in the Bangsamoro parliament, said.

The Bangsamoro region covers the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Marawi, Lamitan and Cotabato.

Macacua, who was BARMM natural resources minister before designated as regional senior minister, said what was fascinating with this year’s celebration of the 4^th anniversary of BARMM was the tacit show in different events of the religious and cultural solidarity among the Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous communities in the autonomous region.