COTABATO CITY --- The chairperson of the Blue Ribbon Committee in the 80-seat Bangsamoro regional parliament and members of the lawmaking body’s Committee on Good Government, Accountability of Public Officers and Investigation are now ready for action.
The now duly-elected regional lawmaker Zulfikar-Ali Bayam, most known as “Sol Bayam” in Central Mindanao, was named chairperson of the Bangsamoro parliament’s Blue Ribbon Committee during its inaugural session last October 30.
Bayam and all the other 79 members of the parliament in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao were elected during the September 14 regional elections, the first since BARMM’s creation in 2019.
All members of the parliament who served from 2019, after the inception then of the Bangsamoro regional government, until the September 14 elections in BARMM, were presidential appointees.
Radio reports on Tuesday, November 10, stated that members of the secretariat of the Committee on Good Government, Accountability of Public Officers and Investigation, also known only as the parliament’s Committee on Good Government, met Bayam at his office in Cotabato City on Monday, during which they assured him of their support for his being chairperson of the Blue Ribbon Committee in the regional parliament.
The team that met Bayam then, now his apparent partner in overseeing the committee in the parliament entrusted to him, was led by Jonaina Macabando, director of the Parliamentary Committees Support Service.
Bayam, a known peace activist, had earlier said he will do his best to help BARMM’s chief minister, Abdulraof Macacua, pursue his good governance goals as chairperson of the parliament’s Blue Ribbon Committee that the region's lawmaking body had entrusted to him.
The territory of the Bangsamoro region encompasses five provinces, Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, where its 32-hectare regional capitol is located.