COTABATO CITY —Mohagher Iqbal, the veteran Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) peace negotiator who served as the principal architect of the Bangsamoro peace agreements, has accepted his removal as education chief of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) — but not without placing on record his conviction that the ouster was carried out in violation of his right to due process.

In a statement issued Friday while on official travel, Iqbal acknowledged "with a clear conscience and a humble heart" the decision of BARMM Interim Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua to dismiss him as head of the Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education (MBHTE), effective May 18. Yet even in acceptance, Iqbal's response carried the measured firmness that has long defined his public persona — "tough on issues but soft on people."

"The Chief Minister, while possessing prerogatives inherent to the position, is not above the law," Iqbal said. "All officials are bound by constitutional guarantees of due process."

The Manner of Removal

Iqbal described the dismissal as a "natural recourse" after he refused an earlier directive to resign by May 18. 

Macacua, appointed BARMM interim chief minister in March 2025, premised the action on what he called a "lack of trust and confidence" in Iqbal's leadership — citing the need to restore public trust in the regional government.

But Iqbal took issue with how the removal was executed. He said he was directed to turn over the ministry on the morning of May 19 — yet Macacua had already assumed the MBHTE portfolio the afternoon before, leaving no window for a proper handover while Iqbal remained abroad. He noted that he had yet to collect his personal belongings and had been given no opportunity to bid farewell to the ministry's staff.

The removal had been preceded by a May 11 memorandum ordering Iqbal to resign following preliminary findings by the Commission on Audit (COA) flagging alleged irregularities in MBHTE procurement and disbursement of funds totaling around ?2.2 billion. The COA-flagged concerns included delayed deliveries, defects in bidder documents, and payments alleged to have violated prescribed government procurement procedures.

Due Process Contested

In a May 16 reply to Macacua, Iqbal refused to step down. He argued the COA findings were preliminary — part of a routine audit process to which the ministry was still obligated to formally respond — with no criminal investigation initiated and no formal charges filed against him.

"Resignation in the middle of this COA audit can be construed as an admission of guilt or an abandonment of duty," Iqbal wrote, stressing that the MBHTE had been fully cooperating with auditors throughout the process.

Lawyer Camilo Miguel Montesa, a long-time legal companion of the Bangsamoro peace process, supported this position, saying that preliminary COA findings do not constitute legal grounds for removal and fall short of the due process threshold required under existing law.

The MILF Central Committee had also weighed in before the dismissal took effect, issuing Memorandum Order No. 09, Series of 2026, urging Macacua to defer the removal pending consultation with the organization's leadership. That call went unheeded.

A Pillar of the Peace Process

Iqbal's removal from the MBHTE marks the end of a seven-year stewardship of the Bangsamoro government's largest agency — one he led since the Bangsamoro Transition Authority's inception in 2019. As the MILF's chief peace negotiator and principal signatory to both the 2012 Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro and the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), Iqbal is widely regarded as one of the foremost intellectual and moral architects of the Bangsamoro political project.

His dismissal — coming on the heels of the removal of MILF Chairman Al Haj Murad Ebrahim as Interim Chief Minister in March 2025 — has unsettled many within the movement who see a troubling pattern of marginalization of the MILF's founding leadership from the very transition they helped build.

Although stripped of his ministerial post, Iqbal retains his seat as a member of the Bangsamoro parliament.

A Call That Rises Above the Personal

What distinguished Iqbal's response from a mere protest was its tone and its reach. Rather than dwelling on personal grievance, he turned his statement into an appeal to the Bangsamoro collective conscience — calling for "sobriety, restraint, and unity" among the Bangsamoro people ahead of the region's historic first parliamentary elections on September 14 this year.

Iqbal urged the international community to sustain its support for the peace process and to safeguard the gains of the CAB — the landmark agreement that transformed decades of armed struggle into a constitutional framework for Bangsamoro self-governance.