On September 14, more than 2.3 million registered voters in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in the southern Philippines will go to the polls for the first regular parliamentary election.
The immediate priority is that the elections should be peaceful, orderly, and credible, but beyond that there is another question that deserves attention: what will political competition look like in communities where political loyalties are changing, particularly in areas historically aligned with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)? The answer could have important consequences for the peace process.
Election-related violence is not new to the Bangsamoro. It long predates the peace agreement with the MILF, and has often been associated with clan rivalries, private armed groups, and local political competition rooted in longstanding disputes. In many communities, elections can even appear relatively peaceful because political power is concentrated within a dominant family or network. The absence of violence, therefore, does not necessarily mean the absence of political contestation; sometimes, it simply reflects the absence of meaningful competition.
As I have argued previously, the movement’s political environment has become increasingly fragmented. Former allies now find themselves competing through different political formations, including the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP) and the Bangsamoro Federalist Party (BFP). Some may remain aligned with UBJP, while others have moved toward BFP or other competing parties and candidates. This raises the question of whether former allies who once operated within a common political and organizational framework can compete against one another without reproducing the patterns of conflict that the peace process was designed to transform.
