LAST Wednesday, July 18, 2018, was a good day for Mindanao.
It was the day when the congressional bicameral conference panel approved the measure that will grant greater autonomy to a new Bangsamoro region, six days after the panel ironed out the contentious provisions of House Bill 6475 and Senate Bill 1717.
It can be recalled that the bicameral conference panel reconciled their respective versions of the landmark measure a year after the 21-man Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) submitted its draft Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) to Duterte.
The reconciled measure, renamed Organic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm), hopes to abolish the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and replace it with the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Under the bill, the proposed region will be composed of the current Armm, six municipalities of Lanao del Norte, and 39 villages of North Cotabato.
With President Rodrigo Duterte, according to Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque Jr., signing the reconciled version on July 23, hours before Duterte’s third State of the Nation Address (Sona), it will be a great achievement for the administration.
With the creation of Bangsamoro Armm, the new region is seen to have greater fiscal autonomy, regional government, parliament, and justice system.
However, the Organic Law for the Bangsamoro Armm is not a perfect law, but it is far better than the Armm.