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‘Maguindanao article missed essential
truths’
“Amid fighting, clan rules in Maguidanao,” the PCIJ story
published on PA1, Thursday Sept, 4, 2008, unfortunately did not
present other essential truths: 1) that the MILF runs a parallel
local governance in each town in most Mindanao provinces; 2) arming
the CVOs is a matter of necessity to protect the people from
harassment and extortion.
Long before this conflict in Central Mindanao,
skirmishes had taken place in the province and the question has been
why only in its rice-producing towns.
Rebel harassment of local militia forces usually
happen in harvest season in the rice-producing towns. Yes, despite
poor showing in the 2003-2006 poverty index survey of the NSCB, the
province produces enough rice (545,211,000 metric tons in 2006,
according to national agriculture statistics).
If the writer of the PCIJ story looked a bit
farther, the ongoing armed conflict has been in rice-producing towns
of Mamasapano, Datu Saudi Ampatuan, Datu Piang and Guindolongan.
None in other towns of low-productivity rate such as Sultan Sa
Barongis and Rajah Buayan.
Only if it is wrong to close one’s door to
armed extortion, and to arm the community in the people’s defense,
could Governor Ampatuan have done wrong.
In the time of President Cory Aquino, then ARMM
Governor Zacaria Candao put in place a clandestine policy of
government collaboration between ARMM and the MILF. But skirmishes
happened more often because not all communities were subservient to
the MILF’s pseudo local governments.
[Editor’s note: The letter then alleges that
bad things happened to reporters and relatives of reporters —
Gilbert Lao, 1993; disappeared; the 60-year-old Dr. Kanakan, a radio
commentator, slapped in public; Mindanao Cross news editor Bong
Guayco, jailed even before being tried for libel in 1992; Dats Piang,
a radio reporter, mauled in his house; two correspondents of
national newspapers, shot in Cotabato City (March 1996); an uncle of
a radio reporter, abducted, in 1992 and later killed—after having
had a brush with the Candaos or their security men.]
And by the way, the head of the Bangsamoro Development
Agency, the development arm of the MILF, is Dr. Abas Candao, also a
brother of the former governor. It may interest the PCIJ to examine
the spending of foreign agency funds released to that “agency.”
But unlike the tolerance of the Ampatuans, one may not be sure of
one’s future after criticizing the Candaos.
Datun Salibo
Mamasapano, Maguindanao
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