BARMM to replace ARMM via BBL
COTABATO CITY – The Bicameral Conference Committee of the 17th Congress has agreed on abolishing the 28-year-old Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and creating in its stead the Bangsamoro in ARMM or BARMM ostensibly to preempt possible legal question before the Supreme Court.
With their separate versions of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) approved last month, the Senate and the House of Representatives named the new entity as “Autonomous Region for Bangsamoro” and “Autonomous Region in Bangsamoro” or ARB for short, respectively, initials reports from both chambers showed.
Allied civil society organizations (CSOs) pushing for the BBL, posted on Monday on Facebook a copy of the working draft of the joint panel showing the preamble of the measure being reconciled for submission to the President on or before the delivery of his third State-of-theNation Address (SONA) on July 23.
“The name of the political entity under this organic law (BBL) shall be known as the Bangsamoro in the autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao, herein after referred to as Bansamoro,” Section 2 of the Article l of the draft preamble states.
Before and during the BBL plenary deliberations in both chambers of Congress, lawyers allied with the crafters of the 1987 Constitution revealed their intent to question its enactment before the Supreme Court.
It was learned that one of the bases in the planned legal petition was the 17th Congress’ inclination to replace ARMM with a new geo-political entity without the term “Muslim Mindanao,” which is enshrined in the 1987 Constitution.
Any act of scrapping such term would require an amendment in the Constitution, according to prospect petitioners. House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez earlier stated that as a lawyer himself, he foresees possible legal question on such aspect.
With the retention of the term “Muslim Mindanao” in the new political entity called BARMM or Bangsamoro for short, Ghazali Jaafar declared on Monday the readiness of the proponents to defend the constitutionality of the BBL.
Jaafar, chair of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) that crafted the BBL, also downplayed as “moot and academic” the complaints of the ARMM’s 24 legislators against an extension in the BTC operation as caretaker in the first two years of transition of ARMM to the succeeding entity.