House joint panel approves report on BBL

THE House committees have approved the committee report on the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), bringing Congress a step closer to enacting the measure.

The proposed law, House Bill 6475, will soon be deliberated upon by all members of the House of Representatives. President Rodrigo Duterte earlier said he wanted the BBL passed within this year.

The House committee on Muslim affairs voted 27-2; the special committee on peace, unity and reconciliation voted 27-3; while the committee on local government voted 32-3 on the motion of Representative Jose Christopher “Kit” Belmonte to approve the bill without amendments.

Among those who dissented were Zamboanga 1st District Representative Celso Lobregat, Lanao del Norte 1st District Rep. Mohammad Khalid Dimaporo and 2nd District Representative Abdullah Dimaporo.

The approval of the committee report came weeks after the said committees adopted as its version of the BBL House Bill 6475, authored by House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez.

Alvarez’s bill is also the same as the BBL version submitted by the Bangsamoro Transition Commission to the Congress.

The draft BBL, crafted by the 21-man transition commission, was submitted to Duterte on July 27, 2017 and forwarded to Congress in August the same year.

The proposed Moro law aims to create a new Bangsamoro entity that will replace the current Autonomous Region on the Muslim Mindanao and “solve the root causes of the Moro rebellion and address the historical injustice suffered by the Bangsamoro over generations.”

It is part of the implementation process of the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro (CAB) signed between the Aquino administration and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in March 2014.