KORONADAL CITY (MindaNews / 06 May) — The removal of public school teachers who will serve as members of the Electoral Board (EB) for the May 9 national and local polls in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) is not yet final, an education official clarified Friday.
Mobarak Pandi, chief information officer of the Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education (MBHTE), said the changes in the composition of the EBs in some precincts in the Bangsamoro region are not yet executory.
“The MBHTE has recommended to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) changes in the composition of some EBs. However, it is the Comelec that will have a final say on the teachers who will serve as members of the EBs,” he said in a phone interview.
As of Friday morning, the Comelec has yet to release the final list of appointments of the members of the EB, Pandi added.
He noted the regional education office merely forwarded to the Comelec the recommendations of the school divisions.
“The role of the MBHTE is only recommendatory. We only submitted the recommendations of the school division (heads), who are the ones who really know who among their ranks are willing and able to serve in the elections,” Pandi explained.
The MBHTE has no control on who the school divisions will recommend to serve as EB members, he said.
Reports said that at least 200 public school teachers who were trained to handle vote counting machines were replaced by Islamic teachers from madaris schools.
In a report by the state-run Philippine News Agency (PNA), reelectionist Cotabato City Mayor Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi said the new names were allegedly not trained to serve as members of the EBs by the Ministry of Science and Technology, which, according to her, is illegal.
Sayadi, bet of the Nationalist People’s Coalition, is being challenged by three-term councilor Bruce Matabalao, candidate of the United Bangsamoro Justice Party, the political party of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
She campaigned for the exclusion of Cotabato City to the Bangsamoro region during the 2019 plebiscite for the ratification of Republic Act 11054 or the Organic Law for the BARMM.
The creation of the Bangsamoro region is the centerpiece of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, which was signed by the government and the MILF in 2014 after 17 years of negotiations.
The Bangsamoro transition government is led by the MILF, the erstwhile largest Islamic armed group in the country.
Sayadi warned that with the replacement of the election trained teachers with alleged untrained ones, “there will be chaos in the city during Monday’s elections.”
In the same PNA report, Rey Sumalipao, director of the Commission on Elections in the Bangsamoro region, vowed to settle the issue before the May 9 elections.
Sumalipao confirmed that the MBHTE and the Comelec, then headed by retired chairperson Sheriff Abas, had signed a memorandum of agreement giving the regional education office recommendatory powers on teachers to serve the polls. (Bong S. Sarmiento / MindaNews)
