ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates an empowerment strategy for key actors in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), employing a nested model of responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the transition period for establishing the Bangsamoro government, the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) faced the additional task of managing the COVID-19 pandemic. The nested model used in this study establishes that empowerment cannot be achieved without addressing underlying contributing or influencing issues, such as poverty, infection, quarantine, religion, rido (clan feuds), and—in the case of the BARMM—terrorism. A sub-system comprised of BTA, local government units (LGUs) and civil society organizations (CSOs), embedded in the nested model, is expected to play the most important role in addressing the issue of people's empowerment by strengthening capacity and responding to the contributing issues. First, although protection measures of the Duterte Administration prevailed at the beginning of the pandemic, the working relationship between the Duterte Administration and the BTA left room for the sub-system-level organizations to adopt empowerment strategies. These vertical approaches worked by enhancing access to information, promoting inclusive measures, building accountability, and developing local organizational capacity. Second, the sub-system actors in the BARMM collaborated—in a horizontal relationship—to enhance the empowerment strategy, playing an essential role in promoting empowerment by addressing the problems that disempowered people at the outset of the pandemic. While the sub-system could not exercise direct control over rido and terrorism, both were repressed by the limited mobility during strict quarantines. It can be said that the BARMM has undertaken reasonable efforts to promote people's empowerment, although this could be verified with a field survey—impossible at the time due to COVID-19 restrictions. This case study demonstrates the importance of the sub-system in governance to provide local people with a suitable environment for empowerment.
