Organised in parallel to national polls, these contests pitted former rebels against powerful political clans, with an incomplete peace process hanging in the balance.
- Georgi Engelbrecht
- ICG
As Cotabato City woke up on 9 May, election day in the Philippines, a helicopter circled above.
A brief downpour fell from the gloomy sky above this town, the seat of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), a newly self-ruling area on the archipelago’s second-largest island.
Close to two million people throughout the…