Shariff Kabunsuan turns over assets, manpower to Maguindanao governor

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – With heavy hearts, outgoing officials of Shariff Kabunsuan province, whose creation two years ago the Supreme Court annulled recently for being “unconstitutional,” turned over yesterday all assets and manpower of the defunct provincial government to the office of the governor of Maguindanao.

The 11 towns that once comprised Shariff Kabunsuan, which the 24-seat Regional Assembly of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao created in 2006, originally belonged to the first district of Maguindanao province.

The acting governor of Shariff Kabunsuan, Ibrahim Ibay, whose position has also been dissolved by implication of the High Tribunal’s ruling, initiated the turnover in the presence of ARMM Gov. Datu Zaldy Uy Ampatuan.

The ARMM governor, in a brief message to leaders present in the turnover rite, said he is sad with the abolition by the Supreme Court of Shariff Kabunsuan, but does not question such decision by the High Tribunal.

The 40-year-old Ampatuan said their purpose of splitting Maguindanao into two provinces, through the 24-seat Regional Assembly, was to decentralize governance and politically empower all sectors in the first district of Maguindanao that was to be covered supposedly by Shariff Kabunsuan.

Ampatuan, however, said as a law-abiding political leader, his administration has no way but recognize the Supreme Court’s deactivation of Shariff Kabunsuan.

The Supreme Court’s ruling that the creation of Shariff Kabunsuan through a regional legislation was an offshoot of an electoral dispute between Maguindanao First District Rep. Didagen Dilangalen and his defeated rival in the 2007 elections, Bai Sandra Sema.

“We will never stop from pursuing our noble objective of seeing Shariff Kabunsuan rise again, the most legal way, as a duly-constituted province,” Ampatuan said.

The ARMM governor has tasked lawyers Oscar Sampulna and Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi, the region’s executive secretary and solicitor-general, respectively, to study the viability of compensating all employees of the defunct Shariff Kabunsuan of their salaries until May 2009, but subject to restrictions of the Civil Service Commission and the Commission on Audit.

Maguindanao’s provincial administrator, Engineer Norie Unas, said they are also to request the Department of Budget and Management to allow the transfer of all funds intended for Shariff Kabunsuan from the Land Bank of the Philippines to the account of Maguindanao province at the Philippine National Bank.

The funds for Shariff Kabunsuan, amounting to more than P200 million, have been frozen by DBM and Land Bank after the Supreme Court ruled last year as “unconstitutional” the creation of the province by the region’s legislature, which is also known as ARMM’s “little Congress.”