Draft Bangsamoro bill to be submitted mid-week

The draft Bangsamoro Basic Law will not yet be submitted to Philippine President Benigno Aquino III's office on Monday as expected earlier, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita Quintos Deles said.

According to a GMANews report, Deles, in a text message Monday morning said the bill may instead be submitted to the President by the middle of the week.

"Not today. Agreement was within the week, maybe midweek," said Deles as quoted in GMANews.

She added that the draft bill will be submitted to Congress by the end of August, as it is still undergoing some general fine tuning.

In a joint statement last Aug 10, government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) peace panels committed "to finish an agreed draft Bangsamoro Basic Law by Aug 18, 2014, in sha Allah, in order to allow the Office of the President to submit the same to Congress as soon as possible."

The crafting of the bill was stalled over the past weeks after Aquino's legal team supposedly made changes to the draft submitted by the Bangsamoro Transition Commission.

The Bangsamoro Basic Law will embody the comprehensive peace agreement signed last March by the MILF and the government, aiming to end the decades-long armed conflict in Mindanao.

The draft law seeks to create a new political entity to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.