Ampatuan's former adviser dies

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - The former provincial administrator of Maguindanao who had worked as adviser of the now detained former Gov. Andal Ampatuan, Sr. died on Monday of cardiac arrest in the middle of a severe asthma attack, relatives told reporters.

Engineer Norie Unas, who was in his late 40s, was touted as the “maker” of the former governor, tagged as one of the masterminds in the Nov. 23, 2009 “Maguindanao Massacre” that left 58 people dead, more than half of them journalists.

Unas resigned as provincial administrator about two months before the incident, the country’s worst election-related violence ever, due to a misunderstanding with one of Ampatuan’s sons.

Unas, who hails from Barangay Bagan in Guindulungan town in the second district of Maguindanao, was a political tactician and a trusted "right-hand-man" of Ampatuan.

He was one of the “engineers” behind the election in 2005 of Ampatuan's son, Zaldy, as fifth regional governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The younger Ampatuan was re-elected to a second term in Sept. 8, 2008, two days after the aborted signing of the memorandum of agreement by the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the supposed basis for the creation of a Moro homeland in Southern Mindanao. 

The botched agreement was eventually declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Unas, after the Maguindanao Massacre, lived a solitary life and stayed away from politics.