COTABATO CITY (November 7, 2025) — Cross-section efforts to promote cohesion among the culturally-diverse politicians in the Bangsamoro region got a boost after five governors signed a statement recognizing the leadership of their chief minister, Abdulrauf Macacua, under an extended tenure.
Macacua is overseeing all ministries and support agencies in the now five-year Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and leads the 80-seat BARMM parliament based on an appointment by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr since March 2025.
BARMM’s five governors, Mujiv Hataman of Basilan, Ysmael Sali of Tawi-Tawi, Mamintal Adiong, Jr. of Lanao del Sur, Ali Midtimbang of Maguindanao del Sur and Tucao Mastura of Maguindanao del Norte, signed their manifesto on Tuesday, November 4, following the postponement, due to legal impediments, of the region’s supposed October 13, 2025 first ever parliamentary polls.
The five governors, belonging to different political blocs, stated in their manifesto, copies of which were received by media outfits on Wednesday, November 5, that they are together behind Macacua’s continuing leadership of the BARMM government.
“We affirm our collective confidence in Chief Minister Macacua’s leadership, a partnership we intend to uphold as we move forward in sustaining the gains of peace and development in the Bangsamoro region,” the five BARMM provincial governors said.
Skeptics, among them politicians from other regional parties not aligned with the United Bangsamoro Justice Party of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, told reporters on Thursday, November 6, that they have never ever thought that Hataman, a Yakan, Sali, a Sama, Adiong, a Maranao, and Midtimbang and Mastura, both Maguindanaons, would cross party lines and together support Macacua’s leadership of BARMM via an appointive tenure.
Macacua, who is chief of the MILF’s Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, is a senior official of the front’s political party, which pitted candidates against Hataman and Adiong during the May 12, 2025 elections.
Two regional parliament members, the physician Kadil Sinolinding, Jr. and the lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, separately told reporters that the support for Macacua of the five governors complements the peace overtures of the national government with the MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front, aiming to foster sustainable development in Moro communities as a joint initiative of local executives and their constituents regardless of their political affiliations and tribal identities.
“Our local government units are indispensable partners of the BARMM government in advancing moral governance and inclusive development,” Sinarimbo said.
Sinolinding, also serving as regional health minister, said the manifesto of support to Macacua by the five governors will also disprove notions by people outside of BARMM that leaders in the autonomous region are fragmented, which condones poverty and underdevelopment in its component towns and cities.
Members of big business groups in the Bangsamoro region said the move by the five governors also enhances the investment potentials of BARMM.
“That would have good effect on our efforts to prove to investors from other regions and from abroad that there is unity among our political leaders and that it is safe for them to put up businesses in our region,” the lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council that has members in all of BARMM’s five provinces and three cities, said.
Photo shows President Marcos and Macacua in a light moment together in Malacanang. (November 7, 2025, Cotabato City, Bangsamoro Region)
