COTABATO CITY—The Bantay Ceasefire, a grassroots-based organization monitoring the truce between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), is mobilizing its over 400 volunteers to monitor areas so-called “hotspots” come Monday’s barangay elections.

Bantay Ceasefire Coordinator Rexall Kaalim, however, explained that his group does not intend to monitor the conduct of the voting but “will focus on areas where election-related violence may erupt.”

COTABATO CITY—The Bantay Ceasefire, a grassroots-based organization monitoring the truce between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), is mobilizing its over 400 volunteers to monitor areas so-called “hotspots”  come Monday’s barangay elections.

Bantay Ceasefire Coordinator Rexall Kaalim, however, explained that his group does not intend to monitor the conduct of the voting but “will focus on areas where election-related violence  may erupt.”

Kaalim, who said they would be mobilizing some 400 of the over 700 Bantay Ceasefire volunteers, relayed that they have already been conducting an “assessment and inventory” of identified “hotspot” barangays in at least four provinces in Mindanao. He identified the provinces as North Cotabato, Maguindanao, Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur.

“Our main mandate is to monitor the ceasefire agreement between the government and the MILF. But since any election-related violence in many areas in Mindanao will surely affect the truce, we are converting our machinery into a monitoring organization for election-related violence,” Kaalim said.

The Bantay Ceasefire is joined by the Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID) in its monitoring work.

Gus Miclat Jr, executive director of the IID, said “we do not want to sound alarmist, but our efforts are geared at helping prevent more election-related conflict.”

As of last week, the Bantay Ceasefire has already documented at least three deaths and five others wounded in election-related violence that happened in Maguindanao and Lanao del Norte.

One of these incidents was in Datu Piang where followers of a barangay chair candidate supported and endorsed by the town mayor featured in an armed encounter with supporters of another supposed candidate who is a close relative of an MILF field commander.

Miclat and Kaalim said that they would “try to engage and solicit the cooperation and help of existing ceasefire mechanisms in attempting to avert election-related violence that may affect the ceasefire.”

Kaalim relayed that they have already set meetings with the Joint Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities to discusss how they could “work together in helping make the elections peaceful.”

“We will request the MILF to come up with a policy pronouncement that would support this effort   of trying to prevent election-related violence that may involve their supporters,” Kaalim said, adding they would also ask permission from the Front’s Central Committee to allow them to discuss coordinating mechanisms on the ground with field commanders.

“Preventing conflict, in this particular context, is also helping make the elections more peaceful, orderly and free,” said Shari Palabrica, an IID staff who is part of the team that was deployed to work with the Bantay Ceasefire.

The Commission on Elections has placed 149 barangays in Mindanao in its list of potential election hotspots, many of them are in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Initial data gathered by Bantay Ceasefire showed a number of barangays where known relatives of MILF members are running against candidates supported or fielded by local government executives.