COTABATO CITY (September 29, 2025, Monday) — Local executives were elated with the enactment into law by the Bangsamoro parliament of the yearly grant of the Salamat Excellence Award for Leadership, along with a P20 million incentive, to performing local government units and private service-oriented groups.
The Salamat Excellence Leadership Award (SEAL) was named after Salamat Pendatun Hashim, founder of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, whose 2014 peace compact with the national government, a product of 22 years of peace talks, led to the creation in 2019 of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, replacing the then 27-year less empowered Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Members of the 80-seat Bangsamoro regional parliament told reporters on Monday, September 29, that the grant of the SEAL Award to deserving nominees shall be a yearly activity of the BARMM government, which covers five provinces and three cities.
The SEAL Act of 2025 bill was approved during final deliberations by the parliament last week, according to members of the region’s lawmaking body.
The SEAL Act of 2025 was authored by the lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, who had served as BARMM’s local government minister before he was appointed as member of the regional parliament last March by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.
Two provincial governors in BARMM, Tucao Ong Mastura of Maguindanao del Norte and Ali Omar Midtimbang of Maguindanao del Sur, separately told reporters on Monday, that they appreciate the BARMM parliament’s approval, as regional law, of the yearly grant of a SEAL Award each to selected LGU and private organizations involved in humanitarian and community-empowerment activities.
“That will encourage competence among local government units in providing quality services to constituent communities,” Mastura, a scion of a noble Maguindanaon clan, said.
Midtimbang said the SEAL Award shall be a “good remembrance” of Hashim, who helped organize the Moro National Liberation Front in 1973 and, subsequently, established the MILF in the early 1980s.
Hashim, who had studied Islamic theology at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, died from an illness in an MILF enclave in Butig, Lanao del Sur about two decades ago.
In a written statement last week, the office of Sinarimbo explained that the SEAL Award Act of 2025 is also an enabling measure for the BARMM government’s onetime allocation of P500 million endowment fund that the region’s treasury can invest on any Islamic compliant income generating venture whose earnings shall be earmarked for the cash incentives for awardee LGUs and private organizations.
Photo shows the Bangsamoro capitol in Cotabato City, inside a 32-hectare compound, where offices of almost all agencies of the autonomous regional government are located.