ARMM fears setback in peace process if gov’t concedes anew to MNLF

COTABATO CITY – The political community in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao is apprehensive of an irreversible “setback” in the Southern peace process if the national government will again concede to the Moro National Liberation Front the ARMM leadership.

Known for what seems to be “canine loyalty” to President Arroyo, all of the ARMM’s six provincial governors, 113 mayors and six congressional representatives belong to the administration’s Lakas-Christian, Muslim Democrats party.

A ranking MNLF official, Mayor Isnaji Alvarez of Indanan, Sulu, was heckled in a “unity dialogue” here Thursday among six provincial governors, 113 municipal mayors and dozens of traditional Moro leaders for openly insinuating he would run for ARMM governor during the area’s August elections if President Arroyo will allow the MNLF to regain the regional leadership.

Other mayors from Sulu were incensed with Isnaji’s actuation, which they branded as “divisive and childish.”

“We have tried the MNLF’s leadership in the region for nine long years, from 1996 to 2005. It was during those dark years that we have wanted to bolt from the ARMM and be reverted to the administrative region where our towns once belonged,” said Mayor Wahid Sahidulla of Tongkil, an island municipality in Sulu.

In keeping with the Sept. 2, 1996 government-MNLF peace pact, Malacañang twice conceded to the front the ARMM leadership, first to Nur Misuari, and subsequently to Parouk Hussin, by anointing them one after another as administration candidates during the region’s 1996 and 2001 elections, respectively.

Former secretary of the ARMM’s science and technology department, Isnaji, whose bid for the mayoral post of Indanan in last year’s local election was bankrolled by ARMM Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan, said he and some members of the MNLF have agreed on his candidacy as the front’s candidate for governor if, under the peace process, President Arroyo will “give the ARMM leadership” back to the front.

“That would be a political suicide for the Lakas-CMD and President Arroyo’s Kampi Party. The present political leadership in the ARMM, from the regional government down to its more than 2,000 barangays, is so monolithic in structure with unquestionable loyalty to the President,” said a Maranaw mayor in the first district of Lanao del Sur.

Thursday’s “unity dialogue” among all of the provincial governors and mayors in the ARMM, where political opposition is virtually non-existent, was aimed at showing their support to the Arroyo presidency.

The gathering was capped by the signing of the ARMM governor and his constituent-local executives of special agreements on the grant of infrastructure subsidies to all of the municipalities in the autonomous region, as part of Ampa­tuan’s and President Arroyo’s joint peace and development package for the area, home to some five million Muslim residents.

“The local government units will have autonomy in the handling of funds for the projects. They will directly implement the projects, which are to be monitored extensively by the ARMM executive department,” Ampatuan told reporters, referring to the grants, drawn from the region’s yearly P650 million infrastructure subsidy.