Police, troops secure closing program of Maguindanao fest

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines  --- A battalion-size joint police and Army contingent has been deployed in the surroundings of Buluan town in the province to ensure the safety of Friday’s culmination program for the yearly Maguindanao Sagayan Festival.

The program, to last until late Friday,  will be capped off by a street dancing parade in Buluan by participants from the 36 towns in the province to highlight the cultures and traditions of the ethnic Maguindanaons, the Iranon, and Christian and non-Moro indigenous communities in the province, and a fellowship gathering among leaders of various sectors, local officials and religious leaders.

Chief Supt. Noel Delos Reyes, director of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao police, said policemen have been positioned in Buluan to secure the festival.

He said the Maguindanao provincial police office is overseeing the security preparations to ensure the safety of participants to the closing program of the Sagayan Festival.

“We’re not taking chances. We’re doing our best to help ensure the safety and success of this important event,” Delos Reyes said.

Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, in an emailed statement, said he is grateful to the security support being provided by the Army’s 601st Brigade, under Brig. Gen. Edmund Pangilinan, and Col. Edgar Gonzales of the 1st Mechanized Brigade, and the ARMM police.

“This year’s Sagayan Festival is partly a form of thanksgiving for the recent breakthroughs in the Mindanao peace process which we in the province support all the way,” Mangudadatu said.

He said the 2014  Sagayan Festival, a yearly event in the province since 2011, also aims to showcase the improving security situation in Maguindanao  that has ushered in foreign investors who are keen on putting up Cavendish banana and oil palm plantations in formerly hostile areas.

This year’s two-week Sagayan Festival began February 1. The Sagayan is a centuries-old Maguindanaon war-and-courtship dance depicting the desire of locales to be at peace with non-Maguindanaons around them, and their readiness to defend at all cost their women, children, lands and Islamic faith from all kinds of aggression.

ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman and members of the regional cabinet will attend today’s closing program for the Sagayan Festival, according to the region’s Bureau of Public Information.