Cotabato City—Maguindanao Congressman-elect Esmael Mangudadatu wants the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to help prevent the recurrence of armed conflict with a “war moratorium” in the province for one year.
Mangudadatu, Maguindanao’s three-term governor, said both the national government and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao should explore on a pacification campaign to achieve what he called a “war moratorium” in Maguindanao’s Saudi-Pagatin-Mamasapano-Shariff Aguak Box.
“We pity those children,” Mangudadatu pointed out, apparently holding back tears in an interview with reporters on Thursday.
Mangudadatu said the time for pacification came perfectly with the MILF leadership now at the helm of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority-BARMM to spearhead a whole year dialogue with the Bangsamoro Freedom Fighters in the area.
Residents said SPMS Box has become a “frequent target” of helicopter gunship offensives hovering the area at night.
As the elected representative of the province’s second congressional district, Mangudadatu said he will take to Congress the voice of every child orphaned by war, even as he feared a “cycle” of situations wherein children and youth losing their parents to shooting wars could breed a cycle of dissidence in the province.
Mangudadatu said the BARMM leadership should be allowed by the national government to explore pacification campaign among such groups whose members are also former members of the MILF or of the Moro National Liberation Front.
He said best of efforts could save children of war, and that they would instead be sent to schools to become lawyers, teachers or engineers rather than becoming new breed of armed commanders to wage wars themselves.
Under Mangudadatu, the provincial government has effectively utilized to fund scholarship program revenues from local tax resources and part of those derived from its shares of income tax returns and realty taxes.
The Maguindanao Program for Education Assistance and Community Empowerment (MagPEACE), funded by local revenue resources and shares, has sent thousands of poor-and-deserving students to tertiary education, and more than 7,000 of them have already earned college degrees in various fields.
On politics, he said, hatred should never reign over rivals among his kindred to ruin blood relationship.
Reconciliation would best heal partisan differences that were adversely affected by “chilly verbal attacks” from opposing camps which—after all—were a “mere strategy to generate support from the people.”
Mangudadatu also committed to support the leadership of his cousin-in-law, Governor-elect Bai Mariam Sangki-Mangudadatu, by whichever way he could.
It would not be far-fetch, he said, that political rivals within the Mangudadatu family could reconcile through the initiative of their elders—chiefly, incoming Sultan Kudarat Congressman Sultan Pax Mangudadatu.
Maguindanao belongs to us all; we should care for this province, and that there should be no room for further division among our leaders, he said.