OIC won’t interfere in ARMM gubernatorial race

COTABATO CITY – The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) will not interfere with President Arroyo’s selection of the administration’s candidate for governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in the Aug. 11 elections.

The OIC move virtually ignored an appeal by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) to prod Malacañang to anoint a gubernatorial candidate.

MNLF sources confirmed that Sayeed Al-Masry, special envoy to Mindanao of the OIC’s secretary-general, Ekmelledin Ishanuglo, told them in a series of meetings in Metro Manila, that the ARMM elections, as “an internal exercise,” is something the pan-Islamic bloc of 57 Muslim states cannot be involved with.

The OIC, whose members include oil-rich Arab states in the Middle East, helped broker the Sept. 2, 1996 final peace agreement between the government and the MNLF.

El-Masry, an Egyptian, held separate dialogues last week with MNLF factions in a bid to reunite them in preparation for the third tripartite review of the peace pact tentatively set on the last week of May.

Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, who was installed as the new MNLF chairman by some 300 MNLF leaders during a convention in Pagadian City last April 2, described their meetings with El-Masry as “cordial and fruitful.”

MNLF forces loyal to the front’s founding chairman, Nur Misuari, jailed since 2002 for leading a failed mutiny in Jolo, Sulu in November 2001, refuse to recognize Sema as their new chairman.

A representative of the Gaddafi International Charity Development Foundation (GICDF), Salem Adam, who was Libya’s ambassador  to the Philippines from 2000 to 2005, has also been holding separate  “pacification dialogues” with the feuding MNLF leaders in Manila since Saturday.

Sema said the new MNLF central leadership assured Adam of its readiness to “establish unity” with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in response to an earlier appeal by the son of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, Saiful Al-Islam, chairman of the GICDF, for the two fronts to unite and craft a common peace roadmap for Mindanao.

“Concrete actions have been done toward this end, and further steps are presently being undertaken by representatives of the MNLF and MILF to truly give shape and substance to the envisioned unity and solidarity of the two Moro fronts,” Sema said.

Sema said he has been reaching out to members of the MILF central committee, particularly the front’s chairman, Al-Haj Murad, even before he replaced Misuari as MNLF chairman.

Sema earlier endorsed a ranking MNLF leader, Mayor Alvarez Isnaji of Indanan, Sulu, as his favored candidate for ARMM governor.

Just after Sema’s endorsement of Isnaji, followers of another MNLF leader, incumbent ARMM Assemblyman Hatimil Hassan, also started gathering endorsements for his plan to seek the governorship.

“We refused to sign any endorsement for Assemblyman Hassan because it is Gov. (Zaldy) Ampatuan who we will support if he will (seek) a second term in the August regional elections,” said Lamitan City Mayor Roderick Furigay.

The 40-year-old Ampatuan, regional chairman of the administration’s Lakas-Christian, Muslim Democrats, has not announced yet if he would seek reelection.

In a letter to President Arroyo last month, the MNLF’s military chief, incumbent Sulu Rep. Yusoph Jikiri, vowed to campaign for Ampatuan if the governor would run for a second term.

Ranking MNLF leaders in Lanao del Sur and the region’s six provincial governors and 113 mayors earlier signed separate manifestos urging Ampatuan to seek a second term, promising to campaign for him in their respective communities.

“The OIC and the Libyan government have been made to understand during our meetings last week that it is Gov. Ampatuan who is the man to beat, not someone from either the MNLF or MILF, in the Aug. 11 regional elections,” said a former Maranaw guerrilla leader who is identified with Misuari.