MILF leadership strips BARMM chief of position in ex-rebel front

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June 5, 2026 | 6:40pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The Moro Islamic Liberation Front on Wednesday, June 3, suspended from his MILF post Bangsamoro Chief Minister Abdulrauf Macacua, just three weeks after he assumed control of the controversial BARMM education ministry despite opposition from his superiors in the erstwhile rebel group.

Bangsamoro Chief Minister Abdulrauf Macacua, who got booted from his position as chief of the MILF’s Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, took over on May 19 the management and control of the regional education ministry from its minister then, his superior in the front, Muhaquer Iqbal, after the Commission on Audit released a report about irregularities in the use of P2.2 billion worth of funds drawn from its coffer last year.

The MILF had also stated in its resolution, dated January 3, that Macacua had accepted, without permission from the front's central leadership core, his appointment as BARMM’s chief minister by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on March 3, 2025, replacing then Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod Balawag Ebrahim. 

Ebrahim, appointed in 2019 as BARMM chief minister by then-President Rodrigo Duterte, is chairman of the MILF's central committee.

The resolution pointed out that Macacua also ignored an MILF directive for him not to remove Iqbal as minister of the Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education-BARMM after it hit the news owing to COA’s findings about irregularities on fund disbursements by its officials.

The MILF’s central committee’s removal of Macacua from his position in the front was preceded, about three days before, by reports by certain media outfits in Metro Manila and Facebook news pages operating outside the autonomous region purporting that he would file graft charges against Iqbal, based on COA findings about the mishandling of funds in the MBHTE-BARMM, while he was at the helm of the ministry.

Officials under the Office of the Bangsamoro Chief Minister in Cotabato City and lawmakers in their 80-seat parliament told reporters early this week that Macacua, the figurehead of the regional lawmaking, has not threatened to file corruption charges against Iqbal and that he had clearly explained in press statements early on that it is up to COA to act on the issue.

The MILF’s central committee also ranted about Macacua’s having filed his candidacy for a seat in the BARMM parliament during the September 14 regional elections as an independent candidate despite his having been nominated as an anointed candidate of the front’s United Bangsamoro Justice Party.

The MILF-led UBJP is one of the 16 partisan groups that the Commission on Elections had permitted to participate in the first-ever September 14 BARMM parliamentary polls.

“All of these I accept willingly as being part of what we, Muslims, call `qadar,’ which means a decree of Allah,” Macacua told reporters on Friday morning, referring to his having been stripped of his high position in the MILF.

Officials of three of the largest, from among 16 BARMM regional parties, the Bangsamoro Federalist Party, the  Bangsamoro Party of the Moro National Liberation Front and the Serbisyong Inklusibo, Alyansang Progresibo, had announced last week that there is no political hostility among them and Macacua and that they have no issue about his being an independent candidate for a parliamentary seat covering parts of Cotabato City and Maguindanao del Norte province.

Members of the Bangsamoro parliament, among them practicing lawyers, told reporters on Friday that the MILF central committee's resolution, removing Macacua from his position in the MILF, has no effect at all on his being the chief minister of the regional government and as head of its 80-member parliament.