The Philippines just held a historic vote. What happens now?

The vote is over. The struggle is not.

They voted on Monday. For the first time, the people of the predominantly Muslim Bangsamoro region in the southern Philippines went to the polls to elect their own parliament, a moment intended to be the definitive culmination of a peace process designed to end decades of violent insurgency. This was supposed to be the dividend of peace. A new beginning. It was seen by many as the most crucial step yet in a long and arduous quest for meaningful self rule after generations of conflict with the central government in Manila. The hope was profound. The reality was something else.

Deadly violence preceded the vote. An attack just one day before polling stations opened served as a brutal reminder of the fragility of the situation. This was not an isolated incident in a vacuum of calm. It happened inside an atmosphere of deep unease. Reporters on the ground, including Jan Camenzind Broomby of France 24, described a ‘palpable tension’ hanging over the entire electoral exercise, a sense that the historic nature of the day could not entirely suppress the anxieties of the past. The election was held. But peace was not.

This vote poses a fundamental question. The question is not about electoral returns or the composition of a new legislative assembly. It is about whether a democratic process can genuinely overwrite a history written in blood and shaped by insurgency. The establishment of an autonomous government is a powerful political statement, but the pre election violence suggests that political architecture alone cannot dismantle the deep structures of conflict that have defined the southern Philippines for so long. Is this the start of a lasting peace, bought with a complex 2014 agreement and now ratified at the ballot box, or is it simply the beginning of a new phase in an old struggle, one now to be fought inside parliamentary chambers as well as outside them.

The counting of the ballots is a technical process. A government will eventually be formed and its leaders will take their seats. Yet the success of this entire project will not be measured by the peaceful transfer of power on inauguration day. It will be measured by what happens in the months and years that follow. It will be measured on the streets of towns and in the hills of provinces that have known little but conflict. The real work starts now. The struggle continues.

A peace process decades in the making.

This moment was a long time coming. The road to the ballot box was paved over decades of conflict, negotiation and compromise. It is a story rooted in the history of the southern Philippines. It is the story of Mindanao. For centuries, the island and its surrounding archipelago have been home to the Moro people, a term for the region’s diverse Muslim ethnic groups who resisted subjugation by Spanish colonists and later by American administrators. This history of resistance continued after Philippine independence, creating a deep sense of grievance and a powerful desire for self determination against a distant central government in Manila. The feeling was one of political and economic marginalisation. The response was often insurgency.

Out of this long struggle, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or MILF, emerged as the most formidable separatist group. Their original aim was not autonomy. It was independence. For years, the MILF waged a guerrilla war against the Philippine state, a brutal and grinding conflict that cost thousands of lives and displaced entire communities across the region. The fighting ebbed and flowed, punctuated by periodic ceasefires and failed peace talks which only deepened the cycle of mistrust between the insurgents and the government. The conflict seemed intractable. It defined life in the south.

Then came the breakthrough. A change happened. After protracted negotiations, the government of the Philippines and the leadership of the MILF signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro in 2014. This was not just another ceasefire. It was a fundamental political settlement. The deal was built on a historic compromise. The MILF agreed to abandon its long held demand for a separate nation and to decommission its fighters. In exchange, the Philippine state promised to create a new, genuinely autonomous political entity with far greater powers than its failed predecessor. It was a huge political risk for both sides, requiring the MILF’s commanders to sell peace to their hardened fighters and Manila’s politicians to pass the necessary laws to make the new region a reality.

That new entity is the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, often called the BARMM. Its creation was the centrepiece of the 2014 peace agreement, a structure designed to finally address the Moro people’s historical grievances. The Bangsamoro is not merely a new name for an old administrative unit. It is a new model of governance for the Philippines, with its own parliament, control over key sources of revenue, and powers over justice and education that go well beyond those of other regions. An MILF led interim government has managed the transition for the past few years, laying the groundwork for this first election. Monday’s vote was the final, crucial step in that process. It was the mechanism to transform former rebels into parliamentarians and to give the people of Bangsamoro the power to elect their own leaders for the first time.

The warlords have not gone away.

The election is a contest of two different worlds. It is a collision. On one side are the former rebels of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, now organised as the United Bangsamoro Justice Party, or UBJP. They are guerrilla fighters turned politicians. Their commanders have swapped fatigues for the barong Tagalog, the formal shirt of Filipino politics. Their legitimacy comes from decades of armed struggle and their role in forging the 2014 peace agreement, a document that promised to build a new and more just society. For them, this election is the culmination of that struggle. It is the chance to prove that the pen, or rather the ballot paper, can achieve what the rifle could not.

Facing them is the old guard. These are the powerful, entrenched political clans that have dominated Muslim Mindanao for a hundred years. Their power is not derived from a peace treaty. It is old. It is hereditary. Their authority comes from vast networks of patronage that control jobs and local resources, tying thousands of people to their families through bonds of loyalty and obligation. They have run provinces and municipalities as personal fiefdoms for generations, long before the MILF existed and long before the creation of the Bangsamoro region. They are not a single bloc but a shifting constellation of rival dynasties, a system of power that predates the modern Philippine state.

This is the central political battle of the new Bangsamoro. It is not a simple choice between parties. It is a fundamental conflict over the nature of power itself. The UBJP claims to represent a new way of doing things, promising institutional governance and an end to the corruption and private armies that have plagued the region. The clans represent continuity. They are masters of the old politics, adept at mobilising voters through their existing networks and prepared to use their considerable resources to protect their dominance from these revolutionary upstarts. The 'palpable tension' reported on election day by observers like France 24 is a direct consequence of this clash. The deadly violence that marred the poll, as reported by Al Jazeera, was not random. It is how the old system often asserts itself.

The warlords have not gone away. They have just entered the electoral arena. Some clan leaders have pragmatically formed alliances with the UBJP, seeking to secure their position within the new political structure. Others are contesting the election directly, running their own slates of candidates against the former rebels. They are survivors. Their ability to adapt to changing political circumstances should not be underestimated. Their power is rooted in the social fabric of the region, in family ties and local loyalties that often run deeper than any allegiance to a new, abstract political entity in a regional capital. The election results will show how many seats the UBJP has won in the parliament. They will not show how much power the clans retain on the ground. That power remains a challenge to the very foundation of the peace process.

Manila is watching closely.

Manila is not a passive observer. For the Philippine state, this vote is far from a distant, regional affair. It is a matter of core national security. The decades of insurgency in Mindanao consumed enormous military resources, drained the national treasury and fostered a deep instability that deterred investment while offering a sanctuary for other militant groups across Southeast Asia. That had to end. A successful Bangsamoro autonomous government, one that can effectively police its own territory and deliver basic services to its people, represents the state's only viable exit strategy from a conflict that once seemed permanent. Failure is not an option. It would mean a return to open warfare, potentially on a larger scale than before, inviting the very international extremist threats the government has fought for twenty years to contain. This is the primary calculation for the generals in Camp Aguinaldo and the politicians in Manila. The peace must hold. Any alternative is too costly to contemplate.

There is also the economy. A lot of money is at stake. For half a century, Mindanao’s vast agricultural lands, its rich fishing grounds and its significant mineral deposits have remained chronically underdeveloped, crippled by the constant threat of violence. Peace creates the conditions for investment. The government in Manila, alongside international development partners from Japan to the European Union, envisages the potential for substantial economic growth that could transform one of the country's most impoverished regions into a productive and integrated economic zone. This is not altruism. It is strategy. A prosperous Bangsamoro would be far less susceptible to the siren call of extremism and would begin to contribute tax revenues to the national purse instead of consuming vast sums in military spending. It is a long term investment in national stability, with the promise of a tangible economic return.

This is also about legacy. For the Philippine state, success here would be a monumental political achievement. It would prove that a negotiated settlement can resolve a long and bitter ethno nationalist conflict, an outcome with clear significance for other divided nations. The peace process has been a central policy challenge for successive presidents in the Malacañang Palace, a complex inheritance passed carefully from one administration to the next. Nobody wants it to fail now. Each leader wants to be the one on whose watch peace finally and irrevocably takes root. A collapse of the process after this historic Monday vote would not just be a security crisis. It would be a national humiliation. It would be a profound political failure on the international stage, undoing decades of difficult diplomacy and squandering a rare opportunity for lasting reconciliation.

The real work begins after the count.

The counting has begun. This is not the end. The election on Monday is a beginning, a single step in a process fraught with immense difficulty. The newly elected parliament now faces the enormous task of building a functioning state from the ground up, a project that involves disarming thousands of former fighters and managing the powerful clan structures that have dominated the region for a century. It is a monumental challenge. The future of peace in Mindanao depends on it.

The immediate test is one of governance. For decades, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was an insurgency, organised for guerrilla warfare and clandestine politics, not for the mundane and complex work of public administration. Its leaders must now become bureaucrats. They must become ministers. They have to build credible institutions, write budgets, deliver public services and establish a justice system that people can trust. This requires a completely different set of skills from fighting a war in the jungles of Mindanao, a transformation from rebel commander to public servant that is notoriously difficult to achieve. Success here is not optional, it is the foundation upon which everything else must be built.

Then there are the guns. Thousands of them. The 2014 peace agreement requires the comprehensive decommissioning of the MILF’s armed wing, a slow and delicate process that is fundamental to normalising life in the region. Fighters will not surrender their weapons unless they are convinced that the new political system can protect them and deliver a better future, a calculation of trust that is difficult to secure. The violence that flared just before the vote shows how fragile the situation remains. A failure to manage disarmament properly could see weapons fall into the hands of criminal gangs or new extremist splinter groups, reigniting the very conflict this election is meant to end.

The old powers have not disappeared. The political clans, the entrenched families who have treated parts of Mindanao as private fiefdoms for generations, remain a formidable force on the ground. They contested these elections. They will sit in the new parliament. The MILF must now govern alongside its old rivals, navigating a complex web of alliances and antagonisms that could easily paralyse the new administration or corrupt it from within. Finding a way to integrate or sideline these powerful actors without provoking a violent confrontation will demand immense political skill from the former rebels now installed in government buildings. This is a quiet war. It is a political war.

Finally, there is the economy. The promise of peace must translate into prosperity, and it must do so quickly. People need to see a dividend. The new government has to move beyond strategic plans and international donor conferences to create tangible employment and opportunity on the streets of Cotabato City and in the rural villages. This means building infrastructure, creating a secure environment for investment, and delivering basic services in a region that has been systematically neglected for fifty years. If the new Bangsamoro administration cannot show ordinary people that their lives are improving under the new autonomous arrangement, public faith will evaporate. That vacuum is where extremism finds its recruits. Hope is a finite resource.

Sources. Al Jazeera: Philippines’ Muslim-majority Bangsamoro region votes for first parliament. France 24: 'Palpable tension' as Philippines Muslim region holds first elections.

Analysis. Drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed above and reviewed by an editor before publication. Jnews links to the organisations it writes about.