MILF activates United Bangsamoro Justice Party

COTABATO CITY ---The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has started activating the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), setting off its evolution from an armed group into a diversified bloc aiming to rely on honest governance to run the Bangsamoro political entity. MILF officials confirmed this to ndbcnews.com.ph this week following the symbolic November 2 turnover of the Bangsamoro Development Plan to the group’s central committee by the Bangsamoro Development Agency in Camp Darapanan in Sultan Kudarat town in northeast of Maguindanao. The UBJP is now being organized as the MILF’s political party, according to the MILF leadership. The organizational structure and other technical intricacies of the UBJP have initially been discussed in recent meetings by members of the MILF’s central committee and subordinate-organizations helping put up the party. The MILF’s figurehead, Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim, said they are now, in fact, focused on party membership. Asked to comment, Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), who belongs to the administration’s Liberal Party, said the efforts of the MILF deserve multi-sectoral support. Hataman said the MILF can best pursue its struggle for development, political and economic stability in Moro communities through governance and public administration, which are far from being violent and bloody. Thousands of new registrants, mostly children and relatives of MILF members and supporters, were listed in the ARMM’s book of voters during recent registration activities of the Commission on Elections. Murad and the MILF’s vice chairman for political affairs, Ghadzali Jaafar, said the UBJP is gearing up for the 2016 synchronized for local, national elections and the first ever political exercise in the Bangsamoro region. The MILF and government are now working on establishing, at least by first quarter of 2015, the Bangsamoro government through the Draft Basic Bangsamoro Law (BBL). The bill, which is now in Congress, will replace the ARMM with a more politically and administratively empowered Bangsamoro government once enacted into law and ratified via a referendum in its proposed territory. Jaafar said the UBJP will exist and operate even after the 2016 elections as a political party of Mindanao’s Bangsamoro people. It would not be for 2016 only. The MILF and the Bangsamoro would be democratic and participatory, that is why it (UJBP) will exist even beyond 2016,” Jaafar pointed out. He said the MILF leadership is keen on allowing non-MILF members to join the party, but based on a criteria and procedure that are to be finalized yet. Murad said the MILF had already completed the higher and middle frameworks of the party, which they intend to register soon with Comelec. Once the MILF becomes a political party, it will continue to help in peace and economic programs intended to hasten the socio-economic and political growth of the Bangsamoro communities,” Murad said, adding that they now have a group overseeing the full activation of the UBJP. Part of the government-MILF peace deal is the decommissioning and disarmament of Moro combatants as a prelude to their gradual conversion into unarmed Bangsamoro residents to be provided with interventions that can generate livelihood needed to sustain their families and restore normalcy in local communities. Murad said the MILF, by then, would become a peace and development-oriented organization involved in governance and diplomatic initiatives meant to complement its final truce with government. Murad is optimistic Congress can pass the draft BBL into law early next year.