COTABATO CITY — About 300 candidates identified with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) got elected in Monday’s village and youth council elections, raising confidence in the positioning of peace advocates working for the furtherance of the southern peace process.
In this city alone, a senior member of the MNLF, Datun S. Diocolono, was elected uncontested as chairman of Barangay Tamontaka 5 while four others, who are closely related to leaders of the front, conveniently got to the helm of the barangay governments in Poblacion 8, Rosary Heights 7, Rosary Heights 11 and Mother Tamontaka via landslide victories.
It is expected that in the next 36 hours, no fewer than 200 more winning candidates who are either children or relatives of MNLF leaders on the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi would be proclaimed, Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) officials said.
Mohammad Ali Jawawi A. Sema, son of MNLF chairman Muslimin G. Sema, who is labor and employment secretary of the BARMM, had been proclaimed winner in the two-cornered race for barangay chairman of Mother Tamontaka, this city.
“The election of candidates who are either from the MNLF, or who are close to us and understand the peace and development goals of our group is a blessing. It augurs well with our efforts to expand our peace initiatives down into the barangays,” a member of the MNLF’s central committee, Hatimil E. Hassan, deputy speaker in the 80-seat Bangsamoro regional parliament, said.
Mr. Hassan said a number of candidates in Basilan who are actively supporting the peace efforts of the MNLF and the national government were also elected.
In a statement Tuesday, Gerry A. Salapuddin, the administrator of the Southern Philippines Development Authority, called on elected barangay and SK officials who are either members or supporters of the MNLF to cooperate in protecting the dividends of Malacañang’s peace overtures with the Moro communities that aims to address poverty and underdevelopment in southern provinces caused by decades of secessionist strife.
“Cooperation among us towards that goal will hasten the attainment of lasting peace in our homeland,” Mr. Salapuddin said.
MNLF officials in Sulu who are also members of the regional parliament told reporters here Tuesday that more than a hundred candidates in the province from clans whose leaders are members of the front had won the positions they aspired for.
The BARMM covers the provinces of Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, where there is a strong MNLF presence, besides the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, whose chairman, Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, is BARMM’s chief minister. — John Felix M. Unson
