MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday he has signed the Bangsamoro Organic Law on Wednesday.
“Signed na ang BOL, but I’m still going back because I have a ceremony with (Moro Islamic Liberation Front vice chair for political affairs Ghadzali) Jaafar and (MILF chairman) Murad (Ebrahim),” Duterte said in a speech in Ipil, Zamboanga Sibugay.
The House of Representatives ratified the bill on Tuesday – a day after the Senate ratified the Bicameral Conference Committee report on the measure.
It was the first legislative agenda of new House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was sworn into power Monday after a power struggle with predecessor Pantaleon Alvarez.
“And also I’d like to talk to (Moro National Liberation Front founding chair) Nur (Misuari) so that we can have it by the end of the year,” Duterte added. “I can create also just like an autonomy for him if that what he wants.”
Duterte was supposed to sign the bill – envisioned to grant wider self-rule to the Muslim minority in the south – during his third State of the Nation Address on Monday.
But this did not happen, to Malacañang’s dismay, as the House failed to approve the bill then under the leadership of Alvarez.
The Bangsamoro will be composed of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), six municipalities in Lanao del Norte, 39 barangays in North Cotabato, Cotabato City, and Isabela City.
The region will also get a bigger share of the taxes collected by the government at 75 percent – the ARMM currently gets 70 percent. The rest goes to the national government.
The Bangsamoro Organic Law is one of the requirements under a 2014 peace agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country’s largest Muslim rebel group.
Duterte, the first president from Mindanao, had certified the measure as urgent.
Senators and congressmen last week reconciled their versions of the measure in bicameral meetings.
Duterte’s predecessor, former President Benigno Aquino III, forged the peace agreement with the MILF but failed to get Congress to pass a self-rule law before he stepped down in 2016.
Congress halted debates due to public outrage over the deaths of 44 police commandos in a botched anti-terrorism raid in Mamasapano, Maguindanao in January 2015. (Adrian Stewart Co and ABS-CBN News/PN)
