COTABATO CITY — Thousands of voters lined up along major thoroughfares in Cotabato City on Thursday morning, October 3, while their favored aspirants for local elective posts filed certificates of candidacy under the banner of the pioneer political party in the Bangsamoro region.
Radio stations here and in nearby Central Mindanao cities reported at noontime Thursday that at least 20,000 Muslim, Christian and non-Moro ethnic Teduray residents from across the 37 barangays in Cotabato City appeared on the streets to show support for Vice Mayor Johari Abu, a full-blooded Moro, who is aspiring for the city’s mayoral post in next year’s local electoral exercise.
Abu and his running mate, Bimbo Pasawiran, are the anointed candidates for Cotabato City mayor and vice mayor, respectively, of the Serbisyong Inklusibo, Alyansang Progresibo, most known as the SIAP Party.
SIAP Party, existing since the time of the now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that got replaced in 2019 with a more empowered Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, is touted as the largest and most organized regional political party in BARMM that reportedly has around 700,000 documented supporters in the region’s five provinces and three cities.
Abu, Pasawiran and all candidates of SIAP Party for the Cotabato City council together filed their COCs at the office of the Commission on Elections inside the 32-hectare BARMM regional government center in Cotabato City.
“We in SIAP are ready to forge a written compact with the Commission on Elections, with the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines stating that we shall religiously abide by the Omnibus Election Code. We don’t have a problem doing that,” Abu told reporters who covered their filing of COCs on Thursday morning.
The lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, former local government minister of BARMM, who had also served as executive secretary of ARMM, is SIAP’s campaign manager for Cotabato City.
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