New ARMM spokesman appointed

SHARIFF AGUAK, Maguindanao — Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan has designated his executive secretary, who was a military prosecution lawyer for 14 years, as regional spokesman for administrative concerns and local peace overtures.

Lawyer Oscar Sampulna, scion of a big Moro clan in Paidu Pulangi, an old Maguindanaon settlement in Pikit, North Cotabato, became a member of the Philippine BAR in 1971.

Ampatuan said his designation of Sampulna, who has been functioning as executive secretary of ARMM since October last year, was aimed at enhancing the dissemination of his administration’s peace-building initiatives in the autonomous region.

"I have also ordered Atty. Sampulna to observe utmost transparency in revealing details of all my projects and humanitarian activities in the ARMM," Ampatuan said.

He signed Sampulna’s designation as regional spokesman, on concurrent capacity, last Thursday.

Sampulna had served the military under the Judge Advocate General’s Office for 14 years before his stint as a senior legislative staffer of the ARMM’s Regional Assembly, as administrator of Cotabato City, and, subsequently, as provincial attorney of Maguindanao prior to his assumption as regional executive secretary.

Sampulna and three other lawyers Ishak Mastura and Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi, the ARMM’s trade secretary and regional solicitor-general, respectively, and Arnel Datukon, who is also a certified public accountant, are key political and administrative advisers of Ampatuan.

Guiani-Sayadi is in the forefront of the present streamlining of the regional bureaucracy as part of a "cleansing process" to rid its ranks of corruption. — John Unson