Salvatus created what he called stone sculptures that forested the exhibition space of Arsenale, a place of former sylvan culture and eventually an arms factory, but now being wiped out and beginning to sink because of urban modernity. In the transformation of a former artillery production into a place filled with boulders that also morph into a sonic medium, Mount Banahaw is not only a fortress, a forest, and a sacred site, especially as it allows the brass saxophones to protrude out of the stone’s body; it is also a site of an alternative ecology that performs a different sonic history and vocal narrative of what shapes and makes the Philippines, a narrative that can be found behind the curtain of the nation-state, the theaters of war, and the proscenium platforms of the modern polis. 

By unfurling this imaginary temporal concealment, Salvatus leads us to go behind the curtains of our times, his home province, Quezon, where he not only tells us stories about the folk and their mystical accounts but also shows us how to visualize a different art history defined by the community members organically motivating one another to sustain the magic of Mount Banahaw, the presence of its rich biodiversity and, at the same time,  the location of a curatorial exhibition within a mountain geography. It expands our imagination of the process of art production beyond the reliance on human beings as the agent of creation. Instead, the beauty from a work that charms us is also shaped by the ecology of the place, the natural environment, the forest dwellers, and the very writing dramatized by the earth’s mountain. 

Concrete proof

In this case, the exhibition somehow reclaims concrete proof of the civilizational achievement of the Roman empire right at the core of the Venice Biennale. After all, Salvatus’ stone sculptures document the barbarism of the anthropogenic activity, making these stones symptomatic of the potential disappearance of such a landscape. The stone sculptures appear dispersed across the space, framed by white industrial curtains, with a film that somehow shows the archive of Quezon’s cultural past. In the distribution of stone sculptures, the center allows itself to turn into a natural living room where one can lean or sit on the stones, and then relish the moving image that contains accounts from Salvatus’ grandfather, the archives of the music band that plays perhaps in the town fiesta that is Lucban’s Pahiyas, showing the forest world of Mount Banahaw, peopled by archives and stories by the folk of Quezon and Laguna, apart from the trees and the natural vegetation. 

But in the verdant green that colors such a world, these stone sculptures also appear as figures shaped by the very people’s archives imagined and made to be moved by Salvatus. These stones, as they get dispersed along with the music and canvas of paintings, show how the Quezon folk cultivate their agrarian world as they define themselves with this forest and mountain, and also mark how the forest mountain in itself is becoming a fortress, a defensive space, and the people’s guardian. By making the geographic space function as a means to fence off danger, the thought is also elicited that the exhibition bears a threat and fear. 

More so, if every artwork becomes a contemporary document of the times, this exhibition also incites us to think of the potential disappearance of such a world, which Salvatus wishes to stop from happening, delaying the possible extinction, making the forest world of this mountain last longer through moving images, stone sculptures, art installation, and paintings—the very space that has allowed him to appreciate art. 

‘Dangerous wastelands’  

From this angle, Salvatus, with Quijon’s poetic curation, gives us an alternative world, which has been for the longest time, coming from Robert Pogue Harrison, “the shadow of the civilization.” Thus, from the other side of the curtains, the exhibition becomes the continuing legacy of Hermano Pule, an anticolonial figure who sought refuge in this hidden world. Yet precisely, with his discontent towards the Spanish colonial order, this world remains to be viewed with suspicion, as a hideout for the modern state’s fugitive and, at the same time, a place that the state wishes to extract, especially as seen by forest scholar Jaboury Ghazoul, “dangerous wastelands that are an impediment, even embarrassment, to human progress. 

If the forest remains to function as an obstacle in the larger projects of modernity, the ideas, images, and histories given an afterlife in such a world may always be, in fact, a reversal of the critique of Jason Farago. Most artmaking from the postcolonies—which have been at large forested, shaped by mountains, made to survive through plantations and the agricultural economy—will always be a process that somehow performs what Farago despises as the “art of turning backward.” 

After all, the return to the so-called backward life is also a defensive mechanism of the planet to protect itself from the hubris of anthropogenic activity. This also allows the people of these parts to imagine, to borrow from Arundhati Roy, the art in the small things, making the art production decolonize the modern man as the artist by allowing the lifemaking of the folk in the forest world to reorient our very visual language. Through these “backward” worlds, we get a glimpse of potential artmaking, which underlies that the very practices of anticolonial resistance hidden in this part of the world, behind the curtains of the modern present, can also be about an art practice of making a sovereign world, depending not only on state power but also on the generosity and magic of forests and mountains. 

‘Amateur’

It comes as no surprise that Salvatus uses found objects as the basis of his artmaking, which can be understood as natural to one’s environment. Precisely, the idea of nature is also something that Salvatus shapes for us to think deeply about what is familiar and natural—ideas that some fail to appreciate, such as the complexity of his shows (for example in the Drawing Room, Relaxation is a State of Mind). Others easily denounce some of his paintings as “amateurish,” and subsequently demand clarity without relying on the historical background that shapes his practice, which makes her light the fire by issuing negative verdicts without sensitivity to subjects and processes that can be as complex as the world of Mount Banahaw and the lifeworld of Quezon. 

Yet in such a critique, I find it surprising that we still think our critical acumen can be fleshed out by categories like the amateur. At the same time, with the regime of poststructuralism, it can be baffling that others still view clarity as the highest virtue. If we are expecting such ideals to be performed by an artist, what can now be understood as a matured practice of painting? If we extrapolate such a charge, what can be classified as the artist’s stage of professional maturity? By expecting an evolutionary trajectory of an artist towards a mature and somehow accessible substance and presence, what has happened to the very pursuit of an aesthetic education that springs from an experience of play? What kind of new ecology are we now expecting when we desire maturity and transparency from the artist? Are we not leading ourselves towards the global death of imagination? 

Such a critique of some of Salvatus’ works—the use of found objects, and recently, the stone sculptures—somehow also shows his attempt to challenge an art ecology and market. When we expect artists to perform a level of mastery or expertise, Benjamin Court recovers the earlier precept when someone is called an “amateur,” which is a form of “artistic amateurism” in the context of music, asserting its meaning as a form of challenge to “established musical knowledge,” especially as the word evokes “primitivism” that can also signify as a “celebratory term.” Harnessing the sediments unearthed by Court against the kind of critique, this insight allows us to seize the obverse side of amateur as also a form of critique, especially as it is advanced with a political perspective that can be informed by antiracism and a critique of capitalism. 

In this manner, dismissing the works of Salvatus can expose the critic’s predilections towards artworks that may have been stabilizing the institutional norm of art production, and, at the same time, a preference for a kind of art that does not subvert the reactionary status quo. 

Using vocabularies like “amateur” and “primitive” to express critique somehow also unravels an impasse that the same critical practice advances, failing to recognize that the amateur and the primitive are also the cultural legibility of black and brown folks. This means that established knowledge will always be insufficient when it comes to explaining and valuing the works of the colonial Other, especially if such works wrestle with a tunnel vision that James Scott criticizes as a form of “seeing like a state.” 

Thus, to be an amateur and primitive may also mean not seeing the forest for the trees, and by denying such dynamism and complexities of such worlds, we might end up having critical processes that only seek logics of typification instead of expanding our worldviews, including the utopic wish of decolonizing art. After all, for subjects like Quezon and the Sierra Madre in particular, that appear, figure, and morph into stone sculptures, we get to trace what Andrew Matthews calls “ghostly forms,” manifesting on the one hand as “traces of past cultivation” and, on the other, “partial relations between multiple actors” who “are constantly changing as a result of relations with others.”

Seeing and hearing

Precisely, with the kinetic force that shapes the creatures who inhabit such a world, Salvatus’ participation in the Venice Biennale with the curatorial direction of Quijon shows the broader practice of building an interlink between their respective art and curatorial practices with the broader landscape of Others. These Others unfold into multispecies relations, including the nonhuman life, and by having such breadth of connections, the art practice in this exhibition activates not only our ways of seeing but also our ways of hearing. 

In hearing, after all, for François Bonnet, one experiences where creatures “leave a trace.”  The idea of trace, in fact, for Salvatus, as he said in an earlier interview with John Balaguer, is the “idea of belief, similar to sound or music,” which “is something that cannot be grasped but instead travels through the air, creating new imaginations.” Salvatus, as a result, turns listening into a process of visualizing the enchanting powers of Mount Banahaw, which also reveals the complexity of curatorially exhibiting this lifeworld by animating the interrelations of sound and image within the broader scope of human and nonhuman. 

Yet with the presence of a sonic flux, especially as the marching bands perform within the sonic world of Lucban, Mount Banahaw unfolds into a composition of more than human worlds where the flows of nature, images, and sound lead us to an experience of synesthesia: The stone sculptures appear as a sound-image, embodying the crossovers of sensory feelings that intersect with the binaries of man versus nature, human versus nonhuman, art and nonart, living and nonliving. The stone sculptures also serve, just like the mythology of sound, as an echo of the long crossovers that can be traced back from the earliest volcanic flows of Mount Banahaw, and at present, its immanent force unfolds into a curatorial exhibition shaped by the force of nature. Salvatus’ stone sculptures and Quijon’s curatorial imagination create an analog to imagine the weathering process, the longer geological historical time, and man’s breathing as the conveyer of sound that names, echoes and shapes the image of such world and history to the present. 

Sa Kabilang-tabing ng Panahong Ito is an effort of Salvatus and Quijon to let Quezon and Venice come together in a relational flow, allowing the memories of volcanic flow and lush vegetation of the Philippines to grow and flourish in the exhibition spaces of Italy—a curatorial exhibition enabling us to seize the mountain forest and sinking island, the revolutionary Quezon province and the cosmopolitan island of Venice, the geologic past of these same cities and the shared anthropocentric present. 

All these happen as Mount Banahaw finally flows into this curatorial exhibition and eventually spills its presence in Venice as Salvatus and Quijon lift the curtains of this age, revealing the hidden geological past, and opening the promising worlds kept hidden by our ambitions of control, showing how our anthropocentric selves would always be displaced by nature, our environment, and the flows that emit from volcanos that morph into mystical mountains. 

We thank Salvatus and Quijon for lifting the curtains of this age, for the world to hear and see.

Jose Mari Cuartero is an assistant professor at the Department of English and Comparative Literature of the University of the Philippines Diliman.

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Key achievements underscore the company’s growth and impact since its founding. Through free year-round training sessions, it brought financial education to 661 communities across the Philippines. The sessions numbering 1,178 covered topics ranging from trading basics to advanced strategies, with the aim of equipping Filipino traders with essential skills for financial success. 

To make learning accessible to all, SmarTrade organized 772 in-person and online events involving 41,313 Filipino traders who have benefited from the educational programs designed to help them gain confidence in navigating financial markets.

On a global scale, it has established 532 partnerships and projects, expanding its network and connecting Filipino traders to international opportunities. 

Its media presence has grown across print and digital platforms, with 191 features reinforcing its advocacy for financial literacy. And through a growing social media community of 39,046 followers, it has created a vibrant space for knowledge-sharing and financial insights.

“As we celebrate our seventh anniversary, I’m proud of the milestones we’ve achieved and the thousands of Filipinos we’ve empowered,” SmarTrade president and CEO Joyce Ann Mayo said in a statement.

“Each of these achievements reflects the dedication of our team, the trust of our partners, and the enthusiasm of the Filipino traders we serve. We’re committed to delivering financial education and resources that make a meaningful impact, and we look forward to many more years of helping Filipinos reach their financial goals,” Mayo said.

Looking ahead, SmarTrade is building on its success by developing new programs that address the evolving needs of Filipino traders. With the support of ATFX, a global leader in online trading, it will expand its offerings with advanced tools, in-depth training, and real-time insights to foster growth among Filipino traders and Introducing Brokers.        

SmarTrade is also committed to social responsibility that extends beyond financial education. It regularly organizes workshops for children on saving and money management, to encourage financial responsibility at an early age. Environmental initiatives, such as tree-planting, further reflect its dedication to a positive impact on the communities it serves.

As SmarTrade enters its eighth year, it reaffirms its mission to foster financial literacy and empower Filipino communities. With a focus on growth, inclusivity, and social responsibility, it reaffirms its dedication to helping Filipinos achieve financial independence and a more prosperous future.

For more information on SmarTrade’s upcoming programs and events, visit www.smartradeph.com.

The post 7 years of empowering Filipinos appeared first on CoverStory.

While he still can, Bert Cabornay continues to fish in the sea off Bacoor City, Cavite. He rows farther than usual, towards clearer waters and away from his mussel farm that is barely operating.

Cabornay, 56, noticed in 2020 that the waters around his farm had become turbid. It was during this time that authorities started dumping sand in nearby areas, eventually forming an artificial island.

Across Bacoor’s waters, more land will emerge, commercial buildings will rise and new residences will be built. These are the promises of the city’s twin reclamation projects: the 230-hectare outer island and 90-hectare inner island Bacoor Reclamation and Development Project (BRDP) and the 100-hectare Diamond Reclamation and Development Project (DRDP).

The city government, the proponent, is rezoning its waters to accommodate the two big-ticket projects. But in the process, a large portion of the city’s fishing grounds and aquaculture zone will be wiped out. 

Numerous mussel farms beside his own have been demolished, Cabornay said. 

“They first targeted mussel farms at the 100-hectare island,” he said in Filipino. “Everything that island covers, they’ve already fenced off. They’ve compensated the affected owners.” 

Bacoor, a coastal city skirting Manila Bay, is known as one of the biggest mussel-producing areas in the Philippines, along with Maqueda Bay in Samar and Sapian Bay in Capiz.

Data from the Cavite Ecological Profile spanning 2010-2021 show that Bacoor topped the province’s mussel production for 12 years. Kawit City and Cavite City also contribute to overall production.

Before the sand-dumping started, Cabornay earned between P100,000 and P200,000 every harvest season. But hopes of earning this much will soon be washed away as his farm is next on the list.

“They’re constructing the 230-hectare project next. They’ll compensate the affected mussel farmers… I will be one of them,” he said.

The 90-hectare inner island is materializing, too. In 2020, authorities began dumping sand on the coastal Barangay Maliksi I.

Fishing families once resided here. Boats used to dock at its edges. Bamboo stalks trapping all sorts of edible sea creatures stood in its waters. 

As the land stretches farther, more coastal barangays where fishing families reside will be affected by the largest reclamation project in Bacoor’s history.

Through the decades, artificial islands and reclaimed roads have been restructuring Cavite’s waters.

The Island Cove in Kawit is a product of reclamation that started as early as the 1970s. It is now the site of Philippine offshore gaming hubs. Meanwhile, a portion of the Manila-Cavite expressway (Cavitex) that began operations in the 2000s rips through the waters of Bacoor.

Both projects have stirred controversy for disrupting the livelihood of Cavite’s fishers and displacing mussel farms.

Bacoor’s waters make up a small portion of Manila Bay, which has been subjected to decades-long dump-and-fill operations. More change will come as 13 reclamation projects in Manila Bay, including the BRDP and DRDP, have been approved by the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) as of November 2023.

Demand for land

Bacoor’s growing population prompted the implementation of the BRDP and DRDP. “With such rapid growth, land developments are much needed to facilitate this expansion,” the project report states.

By adding residential and open commercial lands to Bacoor, the “waterfront central business district” is envisioned to enhance and create new sectors, provide adequate housing, and eventually attract economic development, the report adds.

Data from Bacoor’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) for the years 2015-2024 indicate that the population “is expected to double by 2024 based on the 2010 census.”

Bacoor’s CLUP, last updated in 2016 according to the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development, hinted at reclamation efforts to accommodate the projected growth: “The ‘interior’ municipal waters, that is, the municipal waters from the [Cavitex] towards the shore, may be considered for reclamation. This municipal water is estimated to occupy an area of 90 hectares, and there is a provisional approval to reclaim this.” 

The reclamation of the outer islands, however, is missing. And if zoning orders from Bacoor’s CLUP are to be strictly followed, its municipal waters should only be allotted to fishing, aquaculture and mangroves.

The CLUP serves as the long-term management plan of a locality and “identifies areas where development can and cannot be located and directs public and private investments accordingly,” a memorandum circular from the Department of the Interior and Local Government says.

Every local government unit is mandated by law to prepare its own CLUP, which is sometimes referred to as “the people’s plan.”

The City Planning and Development Office is fashioning an updated sea use plan that will put the reclamation projects on the map.

“Only the mangrove, aquaculture and fishing ground zones were included in the existing plan. In our new plan, we have a water use plan that includes the reclamation projects,” said the city planning officer, Rhowena Alcantara.

‘Something’s wrong’ 

Carmelita Liwag, a professor at the School of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of the Philippines Diliman (UP SURP) raised an eyebrow at Bacoor’s plans to change its CLUP.

“If the reclamation is not included in the CLUP approved by the city or the Cavite CLUP, something’s wrong,” Liwag said in a mix of Filipino and English.

But she also pointed out that revising a CLUP during its years of coverage is technically legal: “Although usually, there’s a loophole for the local government unit. They can easily pass a resolution or ordinance to push through with their project be it privately or publicly initiated.” 

As early as 2016, the city council had shown intent to reclaim about 900 hectares of Bacoor’s municipal waters “for future development as a commercial, industrial, residential and tourism center.” It was signed by then Mayor Lani Mercado-Revilla.

No such proposal had reached the PRA’s list of approved projects as of November 2023.

But reclamation continued, only now through private corporations. In December 2016, Frabelle Fishing Corp. and Diamond Export Corp. submitted the BRDP and DRDP as unsolicited proposals, respectively, to the Bacoor City government.

In 2018, the city council approved another resolution allowing the mayor to sign joint-venture agreements with the developers of the reclamation projects.

The revised CLUP had yet to be finalized at this writing, but reclamation operations have been underway for four years now.

Government representatives commonly hold more power in the formulation of CLUPs, said Rafael Dimalanta, a research analyst at the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies.

Dimalanta said that while representatives of nongovernment organizations may participate in a local government’s planning through a local development council (LDC), getting accredited for this body “entails numerous bureaucratic processes and requirements.”

Getting elected to an LDC is “mired [in] politics…” he said. “As such, voices of dissent regarding the content of CLUPs, including zoning ordinances, or even revision of these, are not very common.”

In compliance with the requirements for the reclamation projects, the Bacoor City government has consulted various stakeholders on the impending changes in the municipal waters.

Through these dialogues, city officials admitted that the CLUP does not include the reclamation projects.

Loss of livelihood

Dissenting views on the project, but not necessarily on the CLUP, found space in these consultations, with environment officials raising concerns on the projects’ impact on marine resources.

Meanwhile, the affected fishers voiced their worries about losing their livelihood and homes. “What will happen to the livelihood of fishing families in Bacoor?” a representative asked authorities in the January 2019 public scoping for the reclamation projects.

Lawyer Bernadette Corrasco, a city government official, tried to calm their anxiety, saying in Filipino: “All of us here will thrive… We will put you in a fisherman’s village that is not far from the coastal area.”

But “how will the government ensure that the affected residents are properly relocated?” was the question posed by a barangay captain in a 2018 dialogue. 

Carrasco responded that there will be in-city resettlement of displaced residents. She said their “partner” had already bought land in Bacoor for the relocation site and the local government had secured a budget from the National Housing Authority.

Mercado-Revilla, who accepted the projects on the city’s behalf, addressed her constituents in a public consultation in January 2020. “We should all be excited because the coming changes are towards the progress and development of your family and community,” she said in Filipino.

A relocation site called Ciudad Kaunlaran, located some eight kilometers from Bacoor’s coastal area and to be composed of 3,000 units, will accommodate the displaced residents, Mercado-Revilla said.   

The tenement-type resettlement should be able to house the affected informal-settler families, which number 1,961, according to the Housing, Urban Development and Resettlement Department (HUDRD) of Bacoor City.

But groundbreaking for Ciudad Kaunlaran’s Phase II occurred only last January. Only nine buildings with a total of 540 units comprise its first phase, the HUDRD said.

Cabornay, whose house was among those that got in the way of the projects, opted for the off-city resettlement in Naic offered by the Bacoor City government. Naic is about two hours away from Bacoor. Still, he prefers the houses there over the smaller units in Ciudad Kaunlaran.

Besides, he said, there is a fisherman’s village promised for folks like him. 

But when the Cabornays’ house was demolished, the fisherman’s village had yet to be constructed. They availed themselves of the offered unit in Naic to secure a future house of their own, and, in the meantime, searched for a place to rent in Bacoor.

“As long as there is livelihood in the sea, I will stay,” Cabornay said. “I won’t live in Naic because there’s no job for me there… I know how it is to work in the sea.” 

The promised village, which is now referred to in city documents as a “fisherman’s dormitory,” has yet to be built at this writing.

“If the dorm has space that we can squeeze ourselves into, we’ll fight for it so we can have a place to sleep,” Cabornay said.

Space and capital

In the January 2020 dialogue, Mercado-Revilla denounced claims that the projects would kill Bacoor’s mussel and oyster industry, arguing that there would still be space for fishing and aquaculture.

As of 2023, the Philippine Statistics Authority listed 411 mussel-growing areas in Bacoor, covering about 256 hectares in total. The area allotted for aquaculture in the proposed sea use map is only 156 hectares.

Space is one issue, but capital is another.

Cabornay is worried that mussel farmers like himself will again have to find huge sums of money to set up their farms. He has been cultivating his 0.4066-hectare mussel farm for more than two decades now, investing some P100,000 in it.

But because compensation for farm owners is pegged at only P0.50 per square meter, according to Bacoor’s agriculture office, Cabornay will be entitled to the meager amount of P2,033.

“There will still be space for mussel farms… But what? It will be too cramped, you’re overcrowded, and you’ll need new capital,” he said.

Consulting with the affected residents is only one of the tasks of proponents before their major reclamation projects begin. They must also draft an environmental impact assessment (EIA) of their operations and secure an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

The projects’ EIA identified reclamation as posing a “(t)hreat to existence and/or loss of important local species and habitat.” But it also said that once stock enhancement measures like re-seeding of species are conducted, residual effects will be “nil.”

The projects’ ECC, meanwhile, states that water turbidity is bound to increase, but with the “installation of a silt curtain surrounding the area to be filled with the reclamation materials,” there will be “100% no turbidity.”

Oceana Philippines, an organization dedicated to the conservation of ocean and marine resources, is skeptical about these mitigating measures.

Lawyer Gloria Ramos, Oceana’s vice president, asserted that re-seeding will not work because it is not a sustainable practice. “If it’s that simple, why has fish production been consistently declining?” she said in Filipino.

Bacoor’s mussel industry had been improving since experiencing a sharp decline in 2018. But starting 2020, progress has slowed.

The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) Region IV-A identified land reclamation and lack of expansion areas as threats to mussel production in Bacoor.

UP SURP’s Liwag said reclamation should always be the last recourse to accommodate growing populations. She said that vacant spaces, whether small or large, should first be explored, and that vertical development, or construction of high-rises, is also an option especially if the government can afford it.

“If there’s really no option … the last strategy is reclamation because once you reclaim—and naturally you reclaim the sea—firstly, that’s so costly. But it will also cause a myriad of negative environmental impacts,” the environment planner said.

Unsolicited projects

The P58.32-billion twin reclamation projects were not part of Bacoor’s plans. These are unsolicited projects proposed by Frabelle and Diamond to Mayor Mercado-Revilla’s office.

Because these are joint-venture agreements, the city government only has to allocate a minimal budget for the construction.

When the islands are completed, a sizable chunk will be owned by the developers and the remaining portion will become the property of the local government. Portioning has yet to be finalized, said city planning officer Alcantara. 

Frabelle and Diamond, both formerly chaired by Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr., submitted the unsolicited project proposals for BRDP and DRDP, respectively, to the Bacoor City government in December 2016. 

A month later, the Local City Council passed City Ordinance No. CO 7-2017, formally establishing a Public-Private Partnership Code in the city that would facilitate agreements between the city government and private developers.

In May 2017, Mercado-Revilla issued a certificate of acceptance for the proposals and began negotiations with the developers. The reclamation projects were also opened to other private entities, but no one expressed interest in them.

The Bacoor City Council greenlit Mercado-Revilla to sign the joint-venture agreement through a resolution dated January 2018. Sand was first dumped on Barangay Maliksi I for the BRDP in 2020. 

Robinsons Land Corp/ (RLC) is also involved in the construction of the BRDP’s 90-hectare inner island as a joint-venture service provider of Frabelle, according to a 2021 resolution of the Bacoor City Council.

A report by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reveals that a joint venture was brokered between Frabelle and RLC as early as 2018.

This reporting team sought comments from Frabelle and Diamond by email and phone call on May 7, 2024, and sent a physical letter to their office in Navotas on May 8, 2024. Follow-up requests were made four times, but no response has been received at this writing. 

Tiu Laurel has divested from Frabelle and Diamond, as shown in SEC records obtained by this reporting team. But members of his family, many of whom are board members and stockholders of the businesses, are tied to the projects affecting Bacoor fishing families.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. appointed Tiu Laurel as agriculture secretary in November 2023. The business mogul donated P30 million to Marcos’ presidential campaign in 2022.

A few months into his tenure, Tiu Laurel, laid out a plan that would “[expand] and [improve] available agri-fishery areas to increase production.” 

Poorest sector

Fishers are the poorest among all sectors in the country, the latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority show.

The Bacoor City government believes that the displaced fishers can still benefit from the touted “world-class business hub.” They are welcome to mount their own business establishments there and sell any products they may have, Alcantara said.

She said livelihood programs and “training” are available for them and their spouses, including how to sew: “Tinuturuan din sila, like paano manahi, para ‘yung mga asawa ng fisherfolk meron silang trabahong pagkakakitaan.”

Cabornay, breadwinner of a family of three, was less optimistic. “They mentioned that the children will be the first ones to acquire jobs once businesses open in the reclaimed area… That’s if your child graduates from school. But how will our children finish their studies if we don’t have jobs?” he said.  

This story project was produced with the support of the Department of Journalism at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

The post Bacoor rezones waters for reclamation, reducing fishing grounds appeared first on CoverStory.

Iqbal sat down for an interview with PCIJ executive director Carmela Fonbuena in Cotabato City on Nov. 6, in the middle of the filing of nominees and candidacies for the May 2025 BARMM parliamentary elections.

“We did not expect that to happen. On various occasions, the Chief Minister and President Marcos have discussed that. The President said that we will go for elections, and the reason he cited is very important. ‘Your legitimacy as a member of parliament is enhanced because you are directly elected by the people’,” he said.

“We are ready for the 2025 elections. All systems go. Frankly, I do not understand. We do not understand the reason why all of a sudden there was a move in Congress to postpone the elections in the BARMM.” 

He cited a meeting between the Commision on Elections (Comelec) and BARMM Chief Minister Ahod ‘Al Haj Murad’ Ebrahim, where he said the poll body issued instructions for the election of 73 parliament seats to proceed, minus the seven seats allocated to Sulu. 

He said he believed it is more advantageous for MILF’s political party, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), if elections push through next year. He was confident the UBJP would win a majority of seats in next year’s parliamentary elections and keep the BARMM leadership.

“When you are elected by the people, you have more legitimacy. But when we are appointed by the President, although he has that appointment power, our authority is less,” he said. 

Here are excerpts from the interview:

Q: BARMM issued a statement on November 5 to say it is leaving the matter of postponing the elections for Congress to decide. Could you not take a clear position to support it or oppose it? 

A. While the BARMM in general and I, as a member of parliament, can take a position. How we wish that election would push through. We also understand that Congress has that power to postpone the elections.

But our understanding is that when the Supreme Court decided to rule on the Sulu petition, to be excluded from the BARMM, our understanding is that there would be no problem about that. In fact, the Comelec, in a meeting with the Chief Minister, said that we can proceed with 73 seats [or] minus seven seats from Sulu. Our preparation was not interrupted. 

Q. What are the implications of a possible one-year postponement of the BARMM polls? 

A. One implication is that when you are elected by the people, you have more legitimacy. But when we are appointed by the President, although he has that appointment power, our authority is less. 

Sovereignty resides in the people. 

We respect what the law says. The BARMM government is under the general supervision of the President. But in terms of the exercise of our powers in the BARMM, it’s more entrenched [if elections push through] because we are already elected by the people.

Q. Can MILF’s political party, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party, win a majority of parliament seats if elections push through next year?

A. Under the current equation, I think we will win about 70% of the votes [for regional political parties].

If elections were to be held today, we will win 70% of the votes in Tawi-Tawi because the governor is with us. We will win 70% of Basilan because the governor is with us. We will win 70% or 80% of Cotabato City because the mayor is with us. Then we will win around 80% in Maguindanao del Norte because the governor is with us, and only two mayors belong to the opposition. Maguindanao del Sur will be fifty-fifty because the incumbent governor is running with another party. And then Lanao del Sur, I think, will be around 50-50 or 40-60 against us.

If we look at the totality of that, maybe we can win 70% [of the regional party seats]. Plus the districts. Thirty-two minus seven is 25. I think we will win around one half of that. 

Q. UBJP will not need a coalition to get a majority? 

A. I don’t think we need a coalition. And for the sectoral representatives, there’s eight [seats]. I think we will win seven out of the eight. We are very optimistic.

(UBJP’s rival, the BARMM Grand Coalition, also claimed it can win a majority of the parliament seats in next year’s elections. BGC is a coalition of the political parties of four incumbent BARMM governors.)

Q. Do you agree with political observers that the chances of UBJP winning a majority improved after the exclusion of Sulu from BARMM? 

A. Precisely, yes. That’s correct.

Q. Would the rival party, BARMM Grand Coalition (BGC), have a better chance if Gov. Sakur Tan was a candidate?

A. It’s a tough fight, realistically speaking. It’s going to be a tough fight because Sulu is practically under the control of Sakur Tan. That’s a reality. While, probably, the exclusion of Sulu was not intended to exclude Sakur, that is the consequence. On the surface, I think it’s more advantageous for us if the elections will be held in 2025.

Q. What are the expectations if the bill is passed into law? What changes will happen? 

A. The positive side to that is—because very few of us are running in the local positions—we can focus on helping our candidates in the provinces and municipalities. And then the resources in our hands can be used in the next election. Resources are very important.

Q. Will UBJP still win next year if elections are postponed? 

A. If most of our candidates win the local elections—in the provinces and municipalities—we’ll have more chances of winning in 2026. The bill doesn’t talk only about resetting the elections. Section 2 of the bills says the current members of the BTA are ‘deemed resigned’ upon the effectivity of the law. President Marcos will appoint or reappoint 80 new members of the BTA.

The Bangsamoro Organic Law says that the transition is going to be MILF-led. So we are going to submit 41 names including the Chief Minister. It follows that maybe the same people will be reappointed, or maybe there are changes. Even if we submit, expect that there are changes. But we expect that the law will be followed.

Q. For the MILF nominees, can we expect the same composition? And because you have the majority, the Chief Minister will remain as Chief Minister? 

A. I cannot say with certainty that that will be the case. But our hope is that the nominees of the MILF should be taken as is. Because that’s what the law says. It is going to be MILF-led, meaning the Chief Minister will come from the MILF and majority of the members of parliament will be coming from the MILF.

Anything can happen.

Q. Like what? 

A. Anything can happen. But as far as the leadership of the MILF [is concerned], we will recommend and we hope that the President will give way to our recommendation.

The Chief Minister right now enjoys full support and backing from the rank and file of the MILF. I think there will be some minor changes in our list of nominees to the President, but as to the final composition in the list, it’s too early to tell.

Q. If the BARMM polls are postponed, what can happen in one year? 

A. I don’t know because your guess is as bad as my guess. I am not a lawyer, but there is going to be a constitutional challenge because the Constitution says that elections in the Philippines are going to be synchronized. It’s in the Bangsamoro Organic Law. 

Q. If the elections are postponed and, within that period, Sulu is returned to BARMM. Will it change the political dynamics for 2026 elections? 

A. Precisely, yes. 

Q. You said it will be a tough fight if Gov. Sakur Tan is a candidate. The chances of UBJP winning will depend on when it will be held. 

A. That’s right. Politics is very difficult. 

Q. You have been in government for five years. How are you?  

A. I find it too difficult. Not in terms of governance, but in terms of politics. We’re not used to this kind of politics. We used to only decide in favor of the higher interest of the people. But now we are mostly dealing with the personal interests of people. It’s very hard.

Q. What would you say are the biggest gains of the peace process? 

A. The first gains of the peace process are peace in Mindanao and the development that is now seen everywhere. There is practically no more fighting between government forces and MILF forces. In terms of governance, the Bangsamoro Organic Law is already passed by Congress. It’s something that we have to nurture because there is really an essence of autonomy there. It is not a perfect autonomy, but it’s something that we can be proud of.

Q. Electoral contests are competitions for power. Moving forward, how do you preserve the gains of the peace process? 

A. Vigilance is one very important factor. We have to be vigilant. At the same time, we have to build institutions. The BARMM government has to be functional and efficient. What we’ve done so far is something that we have to nurture and preserve. Peace can only be maintained through peaceful means.

I hope the national government will try to also nurture what has been achieved in the peace process. If we are given a more or less autonomous government, the national government should, within the framework of the law, allow the Bangsamoro people to exercise that limited power given to us.

The  criticism is Malacañang is favoring the MILF. I think that’s not the precise word for it. 

Q. What is the precise word? 

A. We are the ones who are partners of the government. It should be MILF-led because we are the ones who negotiated with the Philippine government. We signed the agreement, and it’s not natural that other people will be the ones in charge of the BARMM in the transition. 

That’s why we wish for the elections in 2025 to push through. After the transition, it’s free for all. Anyone can participate in the elections. To us, 2025 is the time for everyone to join and participate in the elections. We only see the transition as something that would require the MILF to be in the driver’s seat.

After all, if we have fought for the people, if we have negotiated for the people, we are only entitled to be at the helm of government during the transition. After that, all the people in the area can participate in governance.

The post Iqbal: ‘It’s more advantageous for us if elections are held in 2025’ appeared first on CoverStory.

I must admit that I knew very little of rice farming prior to that morning, though I have white rice in 99% of my meals. At the very least, I knew that our rice farmers’ control and agency over their palay were facing some danger of being ruled out with the arrival of genetically modified rice (read about “Golden Rice”) and the impositions of the International Rice Research Institute (Irri). Stretched to my brain’s fullest capacity, the strongest idea I had of seeds was Jesus Christ’s Parable of the Sower, in which the farmer and his scattering of seeds are allegorical to our fates, our choices, and the Kingdom of God. Seeds, I was sure, held that much meaning.

The workshop started with personal introductions by the farmers, less than 40 men and women who had traveled from different parts of the Philippines. We were at the Masipag national backup farm, a farm of no more than three hectares within 40 kilometers northeast of Mount Arayat. I was a bit ashamed to know about Masipag only then, when they had been around since 1985. 

Masipag is a nongovernment organization and its objective is pointed, borne out of the Irri’s and multinational companies’ meddling in the local rice production. The Masipag members told us the story of scientists—many of them disillusioned by the Irri’s narrow science—who in the 1980s conducted consultations with farmers on how the high-yielding varieties (HYV) of seeds were affecting them and their farms. This culminated in a national convention of scientists and farmer organizations which they dubbed the “Bigas Conference,” or the Bahanggunian Hinggil sa Isyu ng Bigas. There, they agreed that local farmers knew themselves, the communities they roamed, their land, and its surroundings most intimately and, therefore, it is they who should choose the types of seeds that they plant, grow, and eventually sell.

Autonomy 

This remains at the core of Masipag’s existence—the farmer’s autonomy. 

They did not, however, enter this endeavor with blind idealism. In fact, we were in one of Masipag’s three national backup farms, where they keep all the varieties of seeds they’ve ever bred preserved, archived, and organized. Empowering rice farmers with the choice to plant the palay they deem best for their specific wants and needs meant that there had to be a way for them to catalogue and to make various types of seeds always available. They showed us where they keep these seeds, over 2,000 varieties of them, in square plywood shelves lined with fragrant leaves to ward off pests, easily replicable by other farmers. The backup farms serve as insurance that, should a farmer foray into growing a certain breed of palay or attempt at breeding a new hybrid, seeds that they (and their land) were once comfortable with would always be on hand. 

This was all mind-blowing for me. For a long time, I held the idea that the many varieties of rice were simply created for the consumers’ budgets and preferences. There was NFA (National Food Authority) rice, budget dinorado, dinorado, and imported rice (most probably jasmine or Japanese rice). In my naive imaginings, farmers have but a few choices to make, plant the palay that yields the most profit, and pray that typhoons spare the crop so they can be rewarded with a bountiful harvest. I realized, then, that as a consumer, I had been made blissfully unaware of the lives of those who produce the food which I literally swallow whole three times a day. Such is the illusion, I guess, that comes with rice when it is served white and (seemingly) “unli”.

7 cycles

Masipag farmers also breed palay of their own type. To do this, they graft palay of different varieties, possessing different characteristics, for seven complete cycles—a process that takes at least three years. They breed palay of their own with the goal of producing varieties that suit the specific conditions of their farms, considering the (micro)climate, flora (e.g. weeds), and fauna (e.g. pests) in their area, and the eventual consumers (i.e. markets, buyers) they hope to sell their produce to. 

This is a major departure from the logic with which the Irri operates, where a god-seed is sought, made, and spread at whatever cost—a process that requires farmers to follow all the Irri’s directives, which often involve taking out bank loans, using only seeds and chemicals recommended and brought in by multinational companies, and, in the end, instinctively hoping to rake in maximum profits.

They showed us around the backup farm, pointing at patches of land sprouting specific breeds of rice and drawing the lines where two different breeds grow side by side and exchange qualities. Still finding it difficult to understand everything that I was hearing, I asked if there was a most popular variety of seed in their network. “No, there is no ‘best’ seed,” they readily answered. They explained that in the seed system with which Masipag works—informal, as opposed to the Irri’s “formal seed system”—the concept of a best seed eludes them because farming, for them, is not one-size-fits-all, not simply geared for profit, and is meant primarily for feeding people. 

They then told us a story of how the consumers’ preference for white rice—or tastier, not-too-filling rice—became one of the main reasons farmers found it difficult to make their own varieties of palay. Because white rice sells most easily, many are lured into believing that it is the only rice to grow. Incidentally, this has also led to unhealthier eating habits for our population; rice as a staple had to always go well with ulam and could be nothing else.

After the short tour, we had lunch of laing, kamote mashed with a bit of cinnamon, brown rice, and a variation of kangkong in spiced vinegar. In the afternoon, the members of Makò Micro-Press conducted a workshop on zine-making. Their admiration of the farmers and what the farmers do was apparent in how eager they were to share their message.

Back to basics

Each of us had been handed a zine in the morning. It was a single piece of paper, folded such that you could flip it open like you would a book, with pages the size of a palm for you to write notes on. Spread open, it would reveal a map of Masipag’s backup farm. I used mine to take notes for the day.

According to the Makò members, zines are simple ways to record and spread ideas. These days when so much of the hype is digital, zines bring writing back to basics and send a clear message: Anyone who wants to write should write, and anyone who cares to read should read. As the publishing industry evolved for centuries since the Gutenberg press, ideas had to be sifted through layers and layers of bureaucracy. Ideas had to fall into the hands of writers, had to be scrutinized by editors, had to be screened by publishers, had to work with academia, and had to suffer with marketing. This has led, for better or worse, to some censorship and to some disempowerment of those who never considered themselves as writers, editors, or even simply as readers. 

Zines, being independent of those processes, hope to challenge that.

When the farmers completed their zines, what we read were illustrated stories we had never heard of or seen before. For example, a farmer recounted how he made his own breed of seeds to fight off the birds that ate his palay. This breed of palay grew a single hair at the tip which choked the birds whenever they tried to swallow it, teaching them to steer clear of it. There were also stories of natural pesticides—spraying siling labuyo essences in gutters to ward off rats and finding them blinded early in the morning. These stories we seem to have lost in our blind subscription to giants like Monsanto Bayer.

Other stories were hopes for simplicity: just a good harvest and enough income to put their children through school. They also pasted grains on the paper, folded it in different ways, and drew the usual landscapes of farmland with two mountains and a sun shining down. These “too simple” stories would not make it to newspapers, books, or the little print we consume. Members of Makò took pictures, hoping to put them on display in future events.

We left Nueva Ecija at dusk that Saturday with many things to ponder. We took the exit that passed through Hacienda Luisita’s dusty gravel roads, and I couldn’t help but think, again, of the Parable of the Sower. I felt that, for a parable, it had such a rickety construction and a backward idea of seeds. I know that it is God who is the Sower and that we are the seeds thrown into different formations of soil, to grow, to be broken by weeds, or to be eaten by birds. But if we find a more thorough understanding of seeds and how so much of our lives begin and end with the seed, then how can the Sower mean for some seeds to fall on difficult ground?

DLS Pineda is an assistant professor at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines Diliman.

Read more: In Maguindanao, internally displaced women are empowered through agri-entrepreneurship

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Confronted publicly for the first time by two of his fiercest critics, former senators Leila de Lima and Antonio Trillanes IV, former president Rodrigo Duterte gestured as if to hit them in separate occasions on Wednesday at the 11^th hearing of the House of Representatives’ quad committee. 

It was Trillanes who appeared to enrage Duterte more. The former president took hold of a microphone at their table and acted as if to throw it at Trillanes, but he was restrained by his lawyers. Trillanes had sought to have him sign a waiver allowing an examination of his bank accounts that the ex-senator alleged to contain huge amounts in bribes from drug lords. 

The tense situation caused a minutes-long suspension of the hearing. When it resumed, Duterte immediately said he was sorry for his “unbecoming behavior.”

Finally making an appearance at the House after repeated invitations, Duterte sat through more than 14 hours of questioning by the members of the special panel that is looking into the illegal drug trade and extrajudicial killings (EJKs) during his brutal “war on drugs” and the Philippine offshore gambling operators.

He reiterated his claim of full responsibility for the killings; said the International Criminal Court (ICC), where he is accused of crimes against humanity, could come “tomorrow” and investigate him before he dies; and admitted to using hyperbole in admitting to killing “criminals” and other lowlife in public statements and at an earlier hearing of the Senate.  

Lawyers in tow

The quad committee’s hearing was to have taken place on Nov. 21 but the co-chairs decided to hold it on Wednesday after Duterte expressed his intention to travel from his base in Davao City and show up at the House. 

The former president had previously shunned the inquiry in which witnesses have accused him of, among others, being behind the so-called Davao Death Squad (DDS) when he was Davao City mayor and ordering the replication of the “Davao model” in fighting illegal drugs on a national scale as well as a reward system for the killing of drug personalities. 

He arrived with three lawyers in tow—his former spokesman and chief legal counsel Salvador Panelo, his former labor secretary Silvestre Bello III, and Martin Delgra, former chair of the Land Transportation and Franchising Regulatory Board. His daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, came late in the afternoon. His ally, former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, was also in attendance.

Before the interpellation, the lead committee chair, Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert “Ace” Barbers, told Duterte that he would be accorded respect and time to air his side. A co-chair, Manila Rep. Benny Abante, said they would be “respectful but not deferential.” Another co-chair, Abang Lingkod Rep. Joseph Stephen Paduano, warned Duterte that “this is not a place for shallow tactics.”

Still, the committee chairs had to occasionally tell Duterte to mind his language and his temper.

‘Lambada Boys’

The former president was initially irritated at Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas’ interpellation, telling her that she should not question him in that manner because she “is not an investigator.” He also expressed annoyance at De Lima’s observations on the interpellations of Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro and 1-Rider Partylist Rep. Ramon Rodrigo Gutierrez.

Regarding Luistro’s request that Duterte name the seven civilian members of the DDS—a request that he declined, saying it may endanger their families—De Lima recalled that confessed DDS hitman Edgar Matobato had once testified being a member of the “Lambada Boys—the civilian component of the DDS.” She named the other six members identified by Matobato, and wondered if this was the civilian death squad that Duterte had said he maintained when he was Davao City mayor.

Duterte made this testimony last week at the inquiry of a Senate blue ribbon subcommittee into the EJKs. 

Taking up Duterte’s reiteration that he was taking legal and moral responsibility for his antidrug policy, De Lima said policemen who had killed drug suspects should not have believed they would be absolved of the crime. “They are wrong to believe this even if [Duterte] said this a thousand times,” she said. “Those who followed the kill order cannot be able to get away with it.”

De Lima also took note of Gutierrez’s question on how the former president could reconcile his claim that he was taking full responsibility for the war on drugs with his other claim that a policeman who killed a drug suspect had personal guilt. She said Duterte had repeatedly insisted that it was the killer who was personally guilty of the killing.

“But let us not forget what Luistro said: If there is such a thing as personal guilt, there is also a principle of conspiracy, because definitely the former mayor is the principal by inducement because he ordered, solicited and induced the killings,” De Lima said, adding:

“The act of the gunman is also the act of the one who ordered him [to pull the trigger], the principal by inducement.”

In her interpellation of Duterte, Luistro said: “Going back to your statement that you’re taking full responsibility for all victims of the war on drugs, both legal and illegal, it is my humble submission … that the former president can be held liable for all these crimes under the conspiracy theory by being a principal by inducement … that without the order, without the reward, these police operatives would not have resorted to killing a huge number of victims.”

Duterte, a former prosecutor, disagreed with Luistro, and told her that a policeman is supposed to do his duty and is under a presumption of regularity for his action.

‘He’s lying’

De Lima took issue with Duterte’s remark to Luistro that he does not know her. She reminded him that he appeared at the first hearing of the Commission on Human Rights chaired by herself when it was looking into the killing of drug suspects in Davao City.

“[Duterte] is lying,” De Lima said, adding that he had insulted her many times and even told her she would rot in jail.

De Lima was detained in Camp Crame for six years on drug charges based on the testimonies of drug felons that were later recanted. She was allowed to post bail only in 2023 and the last of the three cases filed against her was thrown out by the court earlier this year. 

She said that even during his first State of the Nation Address as president, Duterte approached her in Congress and shook hands with her. “The former mayor and president knows me very well, so he is lying,” she said.

Duterte responded lightly that De Lima’s hair is now different, and then, looking at her, made as if to hit her with his fist. They were seated side by side during the hearing.

Bank accounts

But the ex-president lost his cool when Trillanes testified, on questioning by Deputy Majority Leader Jose Teves Jr., on the alleged bank accounts of Duterte and his children containing P2.4 billion supposedly deposited from 2011 to 2013 by drug lords.

The former senator claimed that the war on drugs was fake and that Duterte had used it to scare the nation and cover up his supposed drug syndicate, as testified by confessed hitman Arturo Lascanas at the ICC. 

Trillanes said he had taken a second look at the bank accounts that he disclosed in 2016 and alleged as belonging to Duterte. 

At that time, Trillanes called on Duterte to execute a waiver on the bank accounts. He said that while Duterte had promised to do so, it was Panelo who showed up at the bank branch with a special power of attorney but with specific conditions.

Trillanes said the bank accounts contained deposits from a group of drug lords and that his slide presentation would show the “paper trail of the drug proceeds to Duterte and his family.” He said the bank accounts contained P2.4 billion but that the actual total would be known if these were opened.

“The mistake of Duterte is that he made a joint account with Sara [Duterte, the Vice President],” Trillanes said, adding that there were transactions also made with Duterte’s two sons and the former president’s partner, Honeylet Avancena.

The former senator presented manager’s checks from the original account of one of the drug lords that Lascanas mentioned as Sammy Uy, who allegedly gave “dividends” to the Duterte family every April and October. 

Trillanes said banks have the physical and soft copies of the checks and that these cannot be denied. “This is the smoking gun … the proceeds of the illegal drug trade of the Duterte crime family,” he said. 

According to Trillanes, the manager’s checks can be used should an impeachment case be filed against Vice President Duterte in the House. 

“We concluded that the war on drugs is fake and this was done to protect his syndicate that includes Sammy Uy and Charlie Tan,” Trillanes also said.

‘I’ll hang myself’

On questioning, Duterte said Trillanes’ claims constituted a “serious accusation.”

Paduano then asked Duterte if he would sign a bank waiver, and he said he would do so “tomorrow.”

“If there is an iota of truth [in this], will hang myself in your presence,” Duterte said. He repeated the claim later: “I will hang myself. In the same manner, if I hang myself, Trillanes should also do so.”

Trillanes said the list of the bank accounts was given to him by one Joseph de Mesa in 2016 and that this was validated by the Anti-Money Laundering Council in an investigation conducted by Deputy Ombudsman Arthur Carandang in the same year. He said Carandang was removed by Duterte because of the investigation.

When asked by a lawmaker if he was willing to draft a waiver and sign it, Duterte shot back that he would “slap [Trillanes] in public” in exchange. He then grabbed his microphone and moved to hit Trillanes with it, but his lawyers prevented him from doing so. 

Committee members then suspended the hearing and called for the observance of proper decorum.

When the hearing resumed, Duterte quickly said: “I would like to apologize for the unbecoming behavior …”

The committee members thanked the ex-president for his apology. They also moved to strike from the record the word “slap” that he used earlier.

Read more: More ‘smoking guns’ needed to beef up case vs Duterte et al. at ICC

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Sulu Gov. Abdusakur Tan, who announced his bid to become the BARMM’s chief minister last May, was set to face whoever would emerge as the contender of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).  

There were speculations then that MILF might not push Chief Minister Ahod “Murad” Ebrahim to serve another term, and that Malacañang was pushing to have another MILF leader to take on the role as chief minister. 

The rebels-turned-politicians who have shaped and controlled the BARMM enjoyed the support of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who celebrated the regional government’s accomplishments in his 2024 State of the Nation Address. The MILF formed the political party United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP).

The big political clans rallied behind Tan and formed the BARMM Grand Coalition (BGC). They hoped that Tan’s longstanding loyalty to the Marcoses would persuade the president to refrain from intervening.

On Sept. 9, just a month before the politicians were to file their certificates of candidacy (CoCs), the Supreme Court pulled the rug from under Tan’s feet. Voting unanimously, the justices dismissed petitions to declare the creation of the BARMM unconstitutional but ruled to remove Sulu from the new autonomous setup on the basis that it voted no during the 2019 plebiscite.  

One of the petitions was filed in 2018 by Tan’s own son and namesake, Abdusakur Tan II, long before the elder Tan had aspired to become BARMM chief minister.

Tan, the only person who was seen to have a fighting chance against the MILF, was no longer eligible to run for a regional post. The BGC has not announced plans to field another candidate for chief minister.

Sulu and the autonomous region have yet to see the extent of the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision. Over 5,000 BARMM employees in Sulu are poised to lose their jobs and infrastructure projects could be discontinued if they lose funding from the regional government. 

“Please do not abandon us, as we need your support. After all, the Bangsamoro Organic Law, as reflected in its numerous provisions, envisioned that Sulu, as a core territory, would share in the allocated budget,” Deputy Speaker Nabil Tan said in a privilege speech before his fellow regional parliament members. 

He also asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision. 

Beyond these pressing practical concerns, many Bangsamoro residents have bewailed the high court’s decision. 

Sulu is the cradle of the Bangsamoro’s struggle for freedom, the Tausug homeland and the birthplace of the Moro Nationalist Liberation Front (MNLF), the first Muslim separatist rebel group in the Philippines. The province is integral in the region’s rich history.

“The Bangsamoro won’t be complete without Sulu. This is a major blow to our efforts to push for the unity of provinces in the region),” said Basilan Rep. Mujiv Hataman, former governor of the defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and now one of the BGC’s stalwarts.

On Oct. 1, human rights lawyer Algamar Latiph asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision as one of the respondents-in-intervention for the case. The BARMM government has also filed an intervention before the high court.

It took the court five years to decide Tan’s petition. Who knows how long it will take to rule on the new ones and if it would overturn a unanimous decision at all. 

Meanwhile, what happens to the first regular elections in the Bangsamoro next year? 

On the eve of the first day of candidacy filing on Nov. 4, Senate President Francis Escudero told a radio program that he was going to file a bill to postpone the BARMM parliamentary elections again, stating that Malacañang wanted it. A committee hearing was immediately scheduled for Nov. 7.

Here are five scenarios for the 2025 Bangsamoro polls, based on recent developments and interviews with Bangsamoro stakeholders and experts interviewed by the PCIJ. 

Scenario 1: The first regular elections in the BARMM will be postponed again

Until the eleventh hour, it seemed unlikely, given pronouncements from President Marcos Jr. that he wanted the polls to push through. But Bangsamoro experts and stakeholders never dismissed it.

The Commission on Elections had moved the filing of COCs from Oct. 1-8 to Nov. 4-9 or a month later than the rest of the country to allow political parties time to adjust following Sulu’s exclusion from the BARMM. Comelec Chairman George Garcia said the poll body was “hell-bent” on conducting the polls next year. 

The BARMM parliament is supposed to have 80 members based on its charter. Forty should come from party nominees, 32 from parliamentary districts, including seven in Sulu, and eight from sectoral groups. 

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, BARMM Cabinet Secretary and spokesperson Mohd Asnin Pendatun said it was possible to reassign the seven Sulu district seats, but the process would be long and tedious. 

Comelec said it would proceed with preparations to hold elections for 73 seats in the BARMM parliament.

The candidacy filing opened on November 4 but Escudero’s call to postpone the elections loomed heavily over the event. He is seeking to delay the first regular elections by another year—from May 12, 2025 to May 11, 2026—to allow the autonomous region to “reconfigure its jurisdictions as well as reallocate the seats of its 80-member parliament.”

Escudero’s proposal followed a last-minute Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) Resolution No. 6411, which urged to extend the transition period to May 2028.

“If Malacanang is the one calling for Congress to amend the organic law in order to postpone the elections, it will most probably happen,” said Benedicto Bacani, executive director of the Institute for Autonomy and Governance (IAG).

Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri warned of a potential “backlash” in case of a postponement. He said it would not sit well among locally elected leaders.

Earlier proposals to reset the elections and extend the elections were generally dismissed.

The League of Bangsamoro Organizations called to extend the BTA’s term for three more years and postpone the parliamentary elections until 2028. It was first postponed in 2022 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The group argued that the BTA, led by the MILF, needed more time to complete the normalization process. 

The MILF and the national government have yet to fully decommission armed rebels, disband private armed groups, and ramp up transitional justice efforts. Only when normalization is fulfilled can the two parties sign an exit agreement.

“If we’re gonna accept that argument, there won’t be an election in 100 years in the BARMM because, number one, there’s not gonna be any exit agreement without charter change (Cha-cha),” said Bacani. 

Several other issues await the Supreme Court’s resolution.

In June last year, a group of BARMM officials and residents urged the high court to nullify the Bangsamoro Electoral Code for “violating” the 1987 Constitution, the Bangsamoro Organic Law and the Omnibus Election Code.

According to them, the code infringes upon Comelec and the Supreme Court’s mandates and employs “restrictive” qualifications that hamper political parties’ ability to seek parliament seats. The code mandates the political parties to have 10,000 members.

Scenario 2: Elections proceed in May 2025, and MILF wins majority to continue leading BARMM

Only the BARMM has a parliamentary system in the Philippines, and political parties must secure a majority of the seats to control the government. This means that political parties need to win at least 41 of their political party nominees, district candidates, and sectoral nominees to secure the position of chief minister without outside support.

The Supreme Court’s ruling to remove Sulu from the BARMM changed the dynamics of next year’s elections. With Tan out of the way, many believe that MILF’s UBJP has an improved chance of winning a majority of the parliament seats and continue to lead the autonomous region although it is now smaller in land area and population. 

The court has given the MILF a “tactical advantage” and it doesn’t make sense for the group to support calls for postponement, said an NGO worker.  

Malacañang has indicated support for a scenario in which MILF would continue to rule.

An Institute for Policy Analysis and Conflict report showed that “some of President Marcos’ advisers are suggesting that keeping the MILF in power… will help ensure security and stability.” The report was based on interviews with politicians in BARMM.

On June 24, a leaked voice recording surfaced of a known Marcos political supporter, South Cotabato Gov. Reynaldo Tamayo Jr., allegedly threatening local executives in the BARMM to support the UBJP lest they would be investigated by the Commission on Audit. Tamayo is the president of the president’s party, Partido Federal ng Pilipinas.

Scenario 3: Another party secures the majority and UBJP becomes the minority.

All political parties must submit a list of 40 nominees ranked first to last. To get one parliament seat, the political parties need to obtain 4% of total votes.

Other than UBJP, BGC is the only other party capable of winning more than 41 combined seats from its political party, district, and sectoral candidates, according to Rona Caritos of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente). 

The BGC remains a powerful contender even without Tan, owing to the influence of the other parties and political clans behind it:

• Al-Ittihad-UKB, led by Maguindanao del Sur Gov. Mariam Sangki-Mangudadatu and husband Teng Mangudadatu

• Serbisyong Inklusibo Alyansang Progresibo Party (SIAP), led by Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr.

• Bangsamoro People Party (BPP), led by Basilan Rep. Mujiv Hataman

Bacani believes that many of the elected members from parliamentary districts will still come from BGC because of the clans’ constituencies.

BARMM voters will come from Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Basilan (except Isabela City), Tawi-Tawi and the Special Geographic Area, a loose collection of 63 barangays in North Cotabato. 

“If the MILF’s nominees are their current BTA members… majority are Maguindanaon. That’s just one province,” Bacani said.

“Given the control of governors in the local elections and their alliance, that means they will just have to deliver the province to BGC and they get the majority,” he added.

What will become of the peace process if traditional politicians wrest regional power from the MILF?

They promised to implement all signed peace agreements. BGC also said that the coalition will “push for the annual P5 billion SDF (special development fund) to support the transition of combatants and communities.”

Scenario 4: No party secures a majority, a coalition government is formed. 

If neither the UBJP nor the BGC will win a majority of the seats in parliament, the political parties will have to forge coalitions to form the regional government. 

It could happen, depending on developments before the elections. Several parties have a viable chance of winning a few seats. (LIST: BARMM regional parties accredited for the May 2025 parliamentary elections)

All political parties can form different permutations of coalitions to secure the majority.

The following scenarios could further play out:

• The MILF forms a coalition government with smaller parties and keep the leadership of the BARMM

• The BGC forms a coalition government with smaller parties

• The MILF and the BGC form a coalition government

• If they have enough votes to form a majority, smaller parties form a coalition government, and both the MILF and the BGC become the minority

In this scenario, peace advocate Augusto “Gus” Miclat Jr. said parties in the minority can play a bigger role in the parliament, he said.

“(If you don’t secure a majority), struggle to consolidate the forces you have within Parliament and your constituencies outside to ensure that there are checks and balances,” said the director of the Initiatives for International Dialogue.

The political parties that may have lost members after Sulu was removed from the region were instructed to recruit new members and comply with the requirement of having 10,000 members. 

Two factions of the MNLF have registered as regional political parties. The BAPA party of the Muslimin Sema faction was granted accreditation. The Mahardika party of the Nur Misuari faction was denied accreditation, but it filed a motion for reconsideration. It is pending as of this writing.

Scenario 5: Failure of elections is declared in a number of localities, delaying the determination of majority vote.

Election-related violence in the BARMM has continuously risen since 2018, the Council for Climate and Conflict Action Asia (CCAA) reported.

CCAA executive director Francisco Lara Jr. believes that a failure of election in some localities is not far off. “It is a reality,” he said in a press briefing last August.

Most incidents occurred in Lanao del Sur, while most deaths transpired in Maguindanao, the region’s seat of political power.

“The violence in the mainland during the past two election years may be a prelude to the 2025 elections,” the report said. CCAA also predicted that violence will be “fueled by the challenge of former rebel groups against traditional politicians who (aim) to strengthen their political legitimacy in the region.”

In general, violence has been on the rebound since 2021, it further said.

The leading cause is still the shadow economy, which includes illegal drugs and guns. This was followed by identity issues stemming from land disputes, clan feuds and extremist violence.

Lara raised important questions if BARMM elections are derailed: “Who operates in the interim if a failure of election is called? Doesn’t it extend the power and the authority of the incumbent?”

“We are not here to make the BARMM look bad, or OPAPRU (Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity) look bad, or the Comelec look bad. But they have to be abreast of what is happening. And they have to honestly look at the figures of violence,” he added.

For Miclat, the Bangsamoro and national governments will have to join hands to ensure that the polls materialize in the region. But he reminds everyone that the elections only form part of the peace process. 

“(T)he heart and soul of the peace agreement is not the elections but the full implementation of the peace agreement by ensuring … the creation of the transitional justice board … holistic approach to peace and security addressing displacement and providing the social economic packages, compensation to displaced communities in Marawi and the like,” he said.

After all the ballots have been counted and the candidates proclaimed, the work continues, he said.

“The peace process will have to be hand-in-hand with the governance of the government of the day, whoever that is,” Miclat said. —With a report from Carmela Fonbuena

This article was first published on Oct. 2, 2024. It was updated on Nov. 4, 2024 due to recent developments.

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I view these questions as urgent with the return of Jon Cuyson to Vargas Museum of the University of the Philippines Diliman with Taong Dagat, a queer modernist hydrofiction, giving vitality to surfaces, images, objects, and cinema as tactile points one can anchor on while navigating the exhibition to generate stories and understand what constitutes the sea people. 

In the tropical seascape created in the museum, the ocean mutates into an agent that waters further the artist’s creative vision, leading him to curate an exhibition that wishes to repair our long-lost aquatic affinity and kinship with the ocean lifeworld. Having such desires in Cuyson’s hydrofiction, the exhibition responds to the problem that Bruno Bosteels identified, in which the people have never been complete and finite, and in every attempt to define them, a split slithers through its fabric of social formation, leaving a tare in every desire to unify them. 

Since the split becomes an inherent process in our attempts to define people, this nature also fuels further the divide between land and sea, humans and animals, men and the rainbow community, along with other binarisms set by the modern world. In this manner, with the flawed nature of the very process of unifying the people, such a conceptual gap grants space for Cuyson to fluidly soften the internalized logics of boundaries inherent in the formation of people and queer the differential relations that we anchor on, especially in specific signifying efforts across the hardened linguistic and visual divides: land and sea, human and sea creatures, and people and the nonhuman. 

In the attempts to make boundaries porous and less rigid, the museum space situates Cuyson’s artistic practice as fluid art matter that can dissolve and mediate binaries that haunt and divide people, and allows his artistic imaginary waters to fluidly move across the museum space, appear like a flooding of the floors, turning the concrete dry floors into an ocean world, inviting our collective presence to evolve into a state of buoyant ontology. 

Social relations

The buoyant ontology is a conceptual proposition one can imagine by diving into Cuyson’s works. The works trace fragments of our contemporary ontology, specifically situated in the current ecology of extinction. This idea is informed by how the exhibition presents water as not only restricted to being understood as a resource. Instead, the water morphs into a medium of social relations, facilitated by the flows, showing how people of the sea cannot be defined solely by heterosexual reproduction. 

Cuyson’s Untitled SOS Movement #17, an installation framed by white paintings, made much more playful by the presence of coconuts arranged along with lubricant, digital technology, resin-made mussels, microphone, jasper stones, bottles of Datu Puti vinegar, and water jugs, morphs from being a collection of a fisherman’s quotidian belongings into a humble sea vessel. Yet it also reflects and mirrors the viewers as the vessel is framed and made to shimmer with the luminous metallic sheet on the side; at the same time, viewers may imagine the buoyant state of the vessel, crossing the ocean, carrying such items as it moves in the form of a boat, a raft, and other means of maritime transportation. 

Thus, we can also imagine the objects as things that can be consumed and embodied by people, especially with the ocean’s ability to facilitate the distribution of these objects across the world and be seen by their color, presence, and utility. These objects cannot escape the maritime industry, and precisely, being entangled with the planet’s natural wealth, these objects also collectively bear, embody, and perform a liquifying ability. The hydro turn in our visual culture points out that we have interiorized boundaries and borders enabled by landlocked imagination. But the objects we enjoy on dry land would never reach us by land alone; the mobility of goods is also made possible by the sea. 

The sea has been an earth matter that also shapes our ontological existence as it replenishes a lot of our objects that we can see in Cuyson’s makeshift vessel, by enabling them to be buoyant, cross bodies of water, and actualize our ability to manifest our desires, especially that such a crossing needs the fluidity of the water matter and the social relations in between. Through the sea’s unrecognized presence, we fail to acknowledge how it has been allowing us to surface above the world and embody an ontological existence capable of surviving the world’s rising sea level. 

With the influential role of the ocean in Cuyson’s artistic consciousness, works like Untitled Fictional Feelings #30 simulate the logic of the liquifying ability of water. This can be seen as an installation that humbly situates the paintings as a flesh-colored base of a pedestal, with the jasper stones being exhibited, making it also an alternative canvas, turning the stones into an abstract painting. To the left of this work, the SOS Taong Dagat Hole Painting Series appears as polymorphic paintings in which they manifest as corroding metal surfaces, frozen metal sheets washed away by either snow or the seminal fluid after a successful coital event, and at the same time, rustling colored windows.

‘Vibrant matter’

Cuyson’s works exude a malleable nature, and with this capability, these objects also invite us to recognize an ontology dissolving the visual utility of such pieces, watering and melting their respective reified presences and forms. These works unravel how objects in relation to water cannot be merely byproducts of our extractive relations with nature and the environment. Instead, the mutable power of the objects can also liquefy our expected relations with the museum environment by inviting us to enter the space by withdrawing from our ocularist tendencies. We have to awaken what Jane Bennett calls “vibrant matter,” which is inherent in the objects as the paintings can motivate our bodies to entertain our repressed desires, acknowledge the generated affective power of the object, and feel the works’ liberating power. 

It comes as no surprise that Cuyson’s objects are also totems, objects of witchcraft and folkloric magic. The magic may manifest in Untitled fictional Feelings #6, where a seafarer’s bodysuit is left hanging on a metal clothes rack, and Untitled SOS Movement #4, which appears with jasper stones with a can of Spam or a hard hat while being contained by a luggage belt. Both works reveal how, apart from being solid matter, they also embody a force that radiates an enchanting effect or emancipatory volition. For example, if we pay attention to the bodysuits, these clothes worn by sea people have been the only material that shelters them in weathering the storm from the unpredictable and destructive ocean. In the case of others, this is the only material they embody as they live and survive as modern castaways especially as they labor far from their land, family, and traditional grounds of stability and safety. 

These objects emit an energy that empowers their users and, thus, as the stones embody their mineral nature and charm, while packed along with canned goods, we are also invited to enter the streams of our consciousness, which can be also waterlike, allowing us to entertain the semiotic shifts. The shifts become much more glaring as Cuyson’s Untitled Sailor #19 black and gray foregrounds the traditional metaphors of bondage and oppression such as the chains. But these chains deceive us as they eventually appear as a soft sculpture, allowing tenderness and desire to be always possible, softening anything hard that restricts us. 

Imminent force

The ways of seeing Cuyson’s works can never be singular, and in the multitude of visual meanings, the objects serve as a medium where the message unfolds by showing how one’s desire operates as a force that can be a steady stream of flowing water or a penetrative smash of a wave, making objects, to borrow from Bennett, as always out of one’s side, yet constitutive of the very life the sea people make. In this manner, things constitute people, and the objects in this exhibition are not only liquid in their malleable capability but also perpetually hold the magic of being trans. 

The trans, in this exhibition, unfurls as an imminent force that allows the queerness to vibrate into a rhythmic charge, palpable in the curatorial arrangement of the works. After all, for trans poet, theorist, and critic Jaya Jacobo, the queer comes to light as contiguous with trans folks — a revelation and an acknowledgment of a kind of relations that most cannot imagine and comprehend, always being pushed to be dismembered and bordered from one another, instead of being intimately in solidarity, especially with the hegemonic appeal of masculinity whose premise of existence is to deny and negate everyone, specifically women. Jacobo’s intersectional imagination of the feminine in the lifeworld of trans against the policing mindset of machismo magnifies Cuyson’s intervention as an act of participating in solidarity-building by gesturing towards a perceptive affinity, which withdraws from the monumental edifices of manhood, patriarchy, and machismo.

Cuyson’s intervention manifests in Glory, an animation with a hole burrowed into the middle of the screen that appears like a black hole at the center, signifying a mere dot, an opening, or for others with a queer playful mind, a glory hole, especially as the mark at the center deepens into the cavernous cave. The hole’s presence also makes the visualscapes of seafaring pass through it as if leaving a trace on the subjects who also manifest in the screen as an entity naturally bearing a lacuna, which can be also imagined as a lack, something missing, and even a remainder. 

This visual characterization, akin to Jacobo, invites us also to consider structural facets of these animated images as having their interiority, a loob, an unknown interior world of the hole, but also juxtaposed with the manifest presence, palabas. An interior-exterior spatial relation becomes also a process of embodiment, displacement, and oscillation. The relations of loob and palabas stage a phenomenological presence where the hole becomes not only limited to penetrative experience enforced by masculinity. Instead, the hole is a performance of the unfulfilled gap that masculinity wishes to efface by virtue of one’s omniscient phantasm. 

Yet Cuyson invites us to imagine the flirtatious ability of the queer who can go around the hole, and penetrates it at times, a lifemaking in a protracted process, acknowledging the holes as, not a defect, but a curve that one can transcend, survive, and shape into a new being unto the world despite all the impossibilities laid upon them. The trans, in this case, will always be a qualitative trace that enables the peoplehood in the sea a buoyant presence. 

‘Trancestors’

This argument becomes much more persuasive with Isola Tong’s decolonial imagination of our teleology, a “trancestral past.”  In the process of resurrecting the banished lifeworlds of the postcolonial Philippines, Tong conjures the narrative of the babaylan, our trancestors, and reconstitutes such past by teasing the feminine of such history through the balangay, a mother vessel, or what she calls a “Vulvic Boat,” showing how “the whole world is our homeland.” 

Tong’s trans reclamation of our barangay society enables us to highlight the transhistorical undercurrent of the moving image and filmic practice of Cuyson, which gives much robust meaning to his transculturation of narratives, from Jean Genet’s Querelle de Brest to his own Kerel, and now, Wet Dreams. This work, Wet Dreams, is a digital video, like his filmic practice before, that resurrects found footage, and allows Lamberto Avellana’s film, Badjao: The Sea Gypsies, to appear once again, capturing the sea gypsies on the raft while juxtaposing images of the standoff between the Philippines and China in the West Philippine Sea. 

This reel of images allows us to seize a potential narrative in which the Badjao also bear the trace of our unrecognized trancestors who could provide an epistemology to enlighten us in conversations about our highly masculine notions of territorial sovereignty. Precisely, just like the character of the film, Kerel, who situates us as receivers and spectators of his dreams that are watered by the ocean, but also because of the pun one can derive from the title, the bodily discharge during one’s intense nocturnal pleasure. Kerel’s character traces the ambition and the desire at the same time, which can never be fixed and rigidified. 

Having such unbounded personhood, Kerel serves also as a relational figure who, drawing from Emmanuel David, allows us to wish and envision a co-existential relationship with one another, which also ultimately enables us to envision what Tong calls a “trancestral gathering.” It is a gathering that allows the people to emerge, whether as trans or queer, bringing back our individual separated lives with the people that can be as large as the sea. Such scale is propelled by how this moving image also serves as an archive of people’s fluid narratives, making the moving image the vessel and medium for people’s stories to be told. The moving image becomes Cuyson’s mechanism to narrate a potential hers- and transtory, not being submerged under water, but visibly buoyant in our waking everyday consciousness. 

Cuyson’s Taong Dagat is a curatorial exhibition that desires to develop a relationship of the people with the sea, a kind of poetics of relation, to borrow from Edouard Glissant, for the sea has been always the place of an “open boat,” which has ferried slaves, migrants, travelers, and fugitives, but also has served as its graveyard for them. Cuyson re-figures this nature of the ocean by also mourning for them through Untitled Fictional Feelings #44, where we see the twigs made of resin grow into a skeletal body lying on yellow foam, showing how the twigs, wood, and other objects we see afloat on the ocean have served as parts of a living body, whether a tree, a human body, and other life forms. However, when the physical body loses its ability to live, we are all reduced into such earth matter, just like Cuyson’s work where we end up looking extinct, residual, and, at the same time, skeletal. 

Yet the death animated by this work also shows how life can also fluidly disappear, and water becomes the aqueous graveyard as people cross into another world, paving the way for the world’s migration adventure, and at the same time, the birth and death of nations. The sea people, in this way, are the very people who enable the possibilities for our contemporary communities to transition from beginning to end, life and death. 

Cuyson’s exhibition, as a result, is an invitation to return to our water past, especially as the world diminishes into a decaying skeletal presence by persisting with the imaginaries of landlocked worlds. In the end, Taong Dagat is a dream of achieving a blue humanity whose ontology crosses the temporal lines of history, fluidly traveling between land and sea, and bearing an expanded kinship within the fluid rainbow of the gender spectrum, and showing that the path for us to collectively become people is to allow ourselves to spread like the sea, living in the world as if it has been peopled by the sea. 

Jose Mari Cuartero is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

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The small Bangsamoro Electoral Office (BEO), located inside the BARMM compound, erupted in a flurry of activities when he arrived. “Tuloy na tuloy ang halalan sa Bangsamoro. No less than the hierarchy of the Commission on Elections, the chairman is present,” he said in a press conference.

The BARMM elections will be historic for being the first regular elections since the new autonomous region was established in 2019 following a successful plebiscite that implemented a peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the former rebel group leading the transition government.

It will also be the first parliamentary elections in the country.

However, on the eve of the candidacy filing, Senate President Francis Escudero told a radio program that he was going to file a bill to postpone the elections, citing the Supreme Court ruling that removed Sulu from the BARMM. A transcript of his interview circulated on the morning of Nov. 4. 

Sulu was supposed to have seven district seats in the 80-member parliament, but no decision has been made about those seats.  

Escudero also cited the need to create a province and congressional districts for the newly created towns in the Special Geographic Area (SGA)—the 63 former North Cotabato villages that voted to join the BARMM. 

Malacañang wanted the postponement, too, he said. 

Among Bangsamoro stakeholders and observers, many mobile phones buzzed with speculation. The signals were clear, they told the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). The postponement call followed a meeting between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and governors in the BARMM. They believe it was a done, albeit last-minute, deal.

But the candidacy filing would continue, Garcia said, until and unless Marcos signs a law postponing the BARMM elections.

Major regional political parties

The anticipation and excitement that built up towards the candidacy filing have all but died down on Nov. 4. The major regional political parties, including the MILF’s United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), decided to file their MIPs at the end of the week instead.

At 10 a.m., a group of nominees arrived. Representatives of the Marawi-based Moro Ako Party, among them young professionals, came with a thick set of documents. It was the first regional political party to officially participate in next year’s elections. No other political party would file until the fourth day.

“We have lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other professionals,” Najeeb Taib, the party’s first nominee, told reporters. 

Moro Ako’s membership includes student leaders, youth organizations, and women organizations. 

Taib is a cofounder of the Moro Consensus Group, one of the civil society organizations that led a campaign for the compensation of victims of the 2017 Marawi siege. He once served as president of the Supreme Student Government of the Mindanao State University in Marawi.

Moro Ako previously joined the party-list elections but failed to win a seat. It is now bringing its agenda to the BARMM parliament. 

“We have studied Bangsamoro Organic Law and there are a lot of provisions which are not yet utilized until now,” Taib told PCIJ. Personally, he said he wants to push for policies on the proper use of natural resources such as Lake Lanao because of its relevance as the source of electricity in the region.

The BARMM parliament will have 40 seats for regional party representatives on top of 32 seats for district representatives and eight seats for sectoral representatives. 

Taib said they hope to win up to eight seats, equivalent to the allocation of one province in the parliament. 

“Suntok sa buwan (It’s a long shot),” said Johaena Marcom of Marantao in Lanao del Sur, the party’s third nominee. But they have a legislative agenda that they hope the voters in the region can consider. 

Approaching end of transition period

The filing period is supposed to be a signal of the approaching end of the transition period that followed the creation of BARMM in 2019. 

The former MILF rebels who have ruled BARMM for five years will seek the approval of voters in the region through the political party they created, the UBJP.  

The BARMM replaced the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). It gained wider powers and resources as a result of a peace agreement between the government and the MILF, which agreed to drop its secession bid in exchange for a political settlement.

After leading the region for six years, will voters keep them in power or replace them? The May 2025 vote is going to be a referendum on the MILF. 

UBJP spokesperson Mojahirin Ali said his group is confident that its candidates can win at least 41 seats to secure a majority without forging coalitions with other parties. 

If the MILF is confident of winning majority seats in next year’s elections, should it support the postponement moves? The postponement call puts it in an “awkward” position, said Ali. 

Ali said the MILF stands to benefit from both the postponement of elections because the group is expected to remain in power.

Likewise, with the scheduled conduct of the elections because the Supreme Court decision made Sulu Gov. Sakur Tan, the candidate of the MILF’s political rival, BARMM Grand Coalition (BGC), ineligible to participate in the regional elections, Ali said.

The BARMM government said it will let Congress decide the matter. 

“We understand the reasons why there is a push to reschedule the first parliamentary elections of the BARMM …. We leave it to the sound wisdom of both houses of Congress, the lower house and the upper house,” said BARMM Cabinet Secretary and spokesperson Asnin Pendatun.  

The Bangsamoro Transition Authority earlier passed a resolution seeking to extend the transition to 2028, citing the Supreme Court ruling on Sulu. But this was led by non-MILF members in the parliament. 

In Manila, the Senate promptly scheduled a committee hearing to deliberate on Escudero’s proposal for Thursday, Nov. 7. Local officials invited to the hearing disagreed on supporting the postponement.

“If Malacanang is the one calling for Congress to amend the organic law in order to postpone the elections, it will most probably happen,” said Benedicto Bacani, executive director of the Institute for Autonomy and Governance (IAG).

Preparations proceed

The high court removed Sulu from the BARMM, citing the province’s no vote during the 2019 plebiscite to create the new autonomous region. 

The decision disrupted the region’s preparations for the 2025 polls, but the Comelec was ready to proceed. It quickly moved to postpone the candidacy filing from Oct. 1-8 to Nov. 4-9. This allowed the political parties that will lose members from Sulu to be able to meet the 10,000 members’ requirement under the Bangsamoro Election Code.

Comelec made the right move, said Bacani. He said he does not believe that the Supreme Court’s decision warrants the postponement of the elections.

If Congress passes the postponement bill, he said there might be legal challenges. He cited the Supreme Court’s decisions on the primacy of the right of suffrage and the synchronization of national and local elections. 

It is best to proceed with the elections next year, Bacani said.

In Cotabato City, the BEO, BARMM government and the two major political parties told the PCIJ they are ready to hold elections next year.

“We are all excited for the first BARMM parliamentary elections …. Everyone is already preparing for the filing. All of a sudden mayroon kang na-file na bill in the Senate resetting the elections. Alam ko lahat ng partido na-surprise naman talaga e,” said Naguib Sinarimbo, city chapter head of the Serbisyong Inklusibo Alyansang Progresibo (SIAP), a member of the BGC.

Sinarimbo filed his candidacy for a district seat in Cotabato City on Nov. 7.

Eight BARMM political parties were accredited to participate in next year’s elections as of this writing. Three others that were denied accreditation were under reconsideration. 

Elsewhere in the region on Nov. 4, in a community inside the MILF’s Camp Darapanan in Maguindanao Del Norte, a group of women gathered to learn how they’re going to cast their votes in the parliamentary elections. 

Over the course of two hours, they learned that Bangsamoro voters will be given two ballots next year. One for the national and local elections, and another for the parliamentary elections. 

There will be two questions in the ballot for the Bangsamoro elections: 1) Which political party they are voting for, and 2) Who among the candidates for district representatives would they like to represent their interests?

The sectoral representatives, including one seat for women, will be chosen in assemblies. They will also be elected in succeeding elections.

All the political party, district and sectoral representatives will make up the 80 members of the parliament, who will then elect the chief minister. 

On a larger scale, Mariam Ali, executive director of the Mindanao Organizations of Social and Economic Progress (MOSEP), said they want to teach women that they can lead their communities. 

“It’s important to do this because it will enable women to understand how crucial their participation in elections is. It’s important for them to make their voices heard and their choices known,” Ali said.

Comelec said it will need P1 billion to P3 billion to hold a separate election in the BARMM, referring to the costs of manual and automated elections in the region, respectively.

Read more: 8 out of 10 district reps belong to dynasties

The post Amid jostling for power in BARMM, a new breed of leaders steps forward appeared first on CoverStory.

Actions for harnessing new technologies and new concepts in the promotion of mental health will also be defined at the conference.

WAPR Philippines is a nonprofit organization of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, public administrators, media practitioners, family caregivers and mental health professionals. It is one of 81 member-countries of the Global World Association for Psychosocial Rehabilitation. 

It is aimed at uplifting the lives of people with mental health conditions, preventing relapse, and decongesting mental health facilities. 

The conference theme is “Resetting Philippine Mental Health: New Technologies, New Concepts.” Prof. Anil Thapliyal, executive director of the e-Mental Health International Collaborative (eMHIC), of which the NCMH is a member, will be the keynote speaker. 

The major topics to be discussed are “Artificial Intelligence and Mental Health” and “Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Machine with Neuro-navigation System of the UP-Philippine General Hospital.”

The guest speakers include Dr. Andrew Greenshaw, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of Alberta in Canada and scientific director of Apec Hub for Mental Health, and Kristine Ann M. Carandang, data scientist and occupational therapist of the adjunct faculty at the Asian Institute of Management. 

On Nov. 30, WAPR Philippines will hold its 25^th Mini-Olympics for service users and family caregivers at the NCMH, 7 a.m.-3 p.m., with the theme “Out of the Shadows, Into the Sunshine!” 

The event is intended to help prepare service users for smooth family and community reintegration. Having been educated on mental illness and now shorn of the stigma, they are now advocates for mental health and help promote mental health awareness in communities. 

The 10 participating agencies are the NCMH (host), Jose Fabella Center (co-host), Sanctuary Center, St Theresa’s Home that Cares, Divine Mercy Psychiatric Facilities, PGH-Ward 7, Veterans Memorial Medical Center, Algon’s Place, Cavite Center for Mental Health, and Elsie Gaches Village.

Read more: We need mental health care in times of calamity

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