As the police and the military prepare to implement security measures for the first ever Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) parliament polls on Oct. 13, an election monitoring group warned of violence possibly spiraling out of control in Maguindanao del Sur following the death of three people in an ambush in Shariff Saydona Mustapha.

In a statement, the Climate Conflict Action Asia (CCAA) said the three fatalities in the Aug. 10 ambush were reported to be members of the 118th Base Command of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Citing reports from their contacts on the ground, the CCAA said the ambush is tied to a land dispute between the two groups that provincial authorities had reportedly mediated only weeks earlier.

“The ambush precipitated renewed gunfighting, forced displacement, and the temporary suspension of classes in six schools nearby,” the statement read.

The group said the ambush was not solely a local land dispute since it was amplified by political alignments tied to the parliamentary contest, involving two base commands of the MILF.

“What may look like localized revenge killings are being intensified by competing political interests in the lead-up to October’s election campaign,” the CCAA warned.

“This pattern — armed factionalism intersecting with political jockeying — raises the real risk that intra-MILF rifts and elite rivalries will cascade into broader violence during the campaign and polling period,” it added.

All set

Earlier, the Philippine National Police (PNP) reported that it will be deploying at least 10,000 in BARMM to ensure the peaceful and credible conduct of the elections. A regionwide gun ban already took effect starting Aug. 14.

PNP data revealed that a total of 94 towns and municipalities of the region are under the election areas of concern, 29 of them are under red category, or the possibility of election-related violence is high.

Two more towns, Buluan in Maguindanao del Sur and Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao del Norte, were already placed under Comelec control.

The CCAA has been urging security officials to strictly implement the measures to ensure that there will be no outbreak of violence, one of them is the “no sacred cow” implementation of the gun ban.

The strict gun ban, it said, is important especially at this point that the decommissioning process of the MILF “has been painfully slow, repeatedly suspended, and marked by red flags.”

Recommendations

To ensure peaceful and credible results of the Parliament elections in October, the CCAA urged the MILF leadership to reverse the suspension of decommissioning and publicly recommit to the normalization roadmap.

“Exercise clear command responsibility: transparently investigate intra-group violence, discipline cadres implicated in armed clashes, and explicitly prohibit the use of armed elements for political purposes. Decommissioning must not be negotiable or conditional on political bargaining,” the group urged the MILF.

It said the decommissioning process must be verifiable and irreversible and this includes independent audits of decommissioning progress, mandatory registration or accounting of weapons excluded from the program, secure custody arrangements, and clear timelines.

The group also urged regional and provincial authorities not to treat reconciliation successes as a substitute for thorough and inclusive dispute resolution processes.