Moro rebs awaiting chance to vote for first time

BARIRA, Maguindanao — Thousands of Muslim guerrillas now living peacefully as farmers in this town, the gateway to their former bastion, Camp Abubakar, eagerly await the May 10 elections where they will, for the first time ever, experience how it is to exercise their right of suffrage.

This early, village leaders in this town’s 11 barangays are certain that President Arroyo will defeat her rivals here.

"We will vote for President Arroyo because it was her administration that revived the peace talks between the government and the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front). It was she who transformed Camp Abubakar into a peace zone after (it was) destroyed by the very people who are now in the opposition," said Ustadz Mangingin Mangotara, a local preacher.

In a random survey the other day, 17 of 21 barangay officials here, some of them identified with the MILF, agreed that a vote for Mrs. Arroyo is an indirect support for the ongoing peace talks.

It is for Malacañang’s rehabilitation projects here that local residents are keen on voting for Mrs. Arroyo.

Since 2001, Malacañang and the office of Barira Mayor Alexander Tomawis have jointly built 57 kilometers of farm-to-market roads and more than a dozen bridges now linking farming communities where the MILF once ran a "shadow government" that capitalized on the poverty and underdevelopment of these villages.

The Army’s 54th Engineering Brigade and private contractors have built more than 10 kilometers of these newly constructed roads as part of the President’s all-out peace initiative in Barira and neighboring Buldon and Matanog towns, also in Maguindanao.

Helping develop Camp Abubakar, renamed in 2001 by the President as Camp Iranun and where former MILF chieftain Hashim Salamat had showcased his concept of a puritan Islamic community, is the Iranun Development Council (IDC).

The IDC is composed of local political, religious and traditional leaders in Barira, Matanog and Buldon.

Tomawis and other local leaders have put up the Barira Ulama Peace and Order Council which, along with the 29-member local police force, is in the forefront of maintaining the fragile peace in the town’s 11 barangays which, in the past, were known to be hotbeds of bloody clan wars.

In the past 24 months, the council has worked out the amicable settlement of more than a dozen decades-old family feuds in the area, negotiated the voluntary surrender of dozens of people with warrants of arrest, and opened the barangays to commerce and trade.

"We ought to thank President Arroyo for having allowed us to rebuild Barira and its surrounding towns through a mixture of our Constitution and religious and traditional laws," Tomawis said.