COTABATO CITY - This month the Institute for Autonomy and Governance (IAG) conducted consultations with various emerging political parties and movements in the region as part of the preparations for the rollout of a training series for existing and emerging political parties in the Bangsamoro.

 

The initiative is part of the 10-month project on Political Party Building and Development in the Bangsamoro which is being implemented by IAG in partnership with Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) with support from the government of United Kingdom.

 

To better gauge and assess how the project’s activities can assist in the empowerment of political parties, IAG met with some political groups such as the Young Centrist Union (YCU) Bangsamoro, Halal Political Party, and OMPIA Youth Alliance. One of the major topics of the consultations was regarding the current organizational capacities of the political groups and the opportunities through which they can further empower themselves in order to meaningfully participate in the BARMM parliamentary elections. The consultations were participated in virtually by a WFD political party strategist and mentor Iain Gill based in Europe.

 

At least 10 emerging political parties and groups in the Bangsamoro will be involved in the training series which will start in the third week of October. This capacity-building intervention will be complemented with political party mentoring, conversation sessions between BTA, CSOs, and emerging parties, advocacy and lobbying with BTA, study group sessions with policy and electoral reform experts, to name a few.

 

A homegrown think-tank based in Cotabato City, IAG runs an active political party building and development program that orients groups and individuals on ‘genuinely principled’ political parties and help them build it. IAG believes that a genuinely principled political party is the basic building block and catalyst for change in the current and future political system in the Bangsamoro region and the Philippines as a whole.