Kris Aquino vows to promote Maguindanaon local cloth

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - Presidential sibling and television host Kris Aquino promised to help introduce to the fashion market the Maguindanaon “inaul” cloth, boosting efforts promoting the improving business atmosphere in the province.

Aquino and the coverage crew of her morning show, Kris TV, aired during weekdays on ABS-CBN, toured Maguindanao last Saturday to film the area’s trade potentials, and the cultures the local Moro, Christian and highland non-Moro indigenous communities.

She said her older brother, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, did not oppose her trip to Maguindanao, convinced she would be safe in the company of Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, chairman of the inter-agency provincial peace and order council.

“When I asked permission from `Noy’ he just told me I will be safe in the hands of the governor,” Aquino said.

Aquino, whose tv program is focused on daily Filipino lifestyle and depicts the eco-tourism and business prospects in the countryside, was visibly fascinated with the handwoven inaul cloth, samples shown to her while filming traditional Moro dances and foods at the family resort of the Mangudadatus in Tacurong City, the gateway to the second district of the province.

Aquino, while being briefed on the history of the inaul, promised Mangudadatu and employees of the provincial government to make the handwoven fabric known to fashion designers in Metro Manila and abroad.

Aquino’s tour in Maguindanao and surrounding areas came just two days after Manila Vice-Mayor Francisco “Isko” Moreno,  and other vice mayors from across the country held in Buluan town the second quarter executive meeting of the National League of Vice Mayors. The meeting was presided over by Moreno- Franciso Domagoso in real life- as national president of the league.

Moreno and his companions, accompanied by Mangudadatu, also toured potential agricultural hubs in the province, including the site of the infamous Nov. 23, 2009 Maguindanao Massacre, whose vast, arable surroundings are now being developed into a Cavendish banana plantation by a group of foreign investors, among them Malaysian and Australian entrepreneurs.

Aquino said she is grateful to the Mangudadatu administration for supporting extensively the government's peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

“It is very important in this peace process to have trust and confidence among each other and to get to know each other too while talking about building lasting peace,” Aquino said.

She said the generation of livelihood and employment for Maguindanao residents, now a major thrust of the provincial government, can hasten the peace process.

The 44-year-old TV host, the youngest daughter of Benigno Aquino, Jr. and Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino, who had served as senator, and as the 11th president of the Philippines, respectively, was also schocked when she learned that she shared the same birthday with Mangudadatu’s wife, Genalyn, who, along with 57 others, perished in the Maguindanao Massacre.

The governor’s mother-in-law, Norjana Tiamzon, who hails from North Cotabato’s Tulunan town, told Aquino she gave birth to Genalyn at about 10 p.m. on Feb. 14, 1971.

“I was born almost midnight of the same day,” Aquino told Mangudadatu’s mother-in-law, who now takes care of her eight grandchildren by her eldest daughter and the governor, who is known as "Toto" among relatives and friends. 

An emotional Tiamzon told Aquino her best remembrance of her slain daughter was how she said goodbye and promised to do everything to help her husband, then vice-mayor of Buluan, become governor before departing for the capitol in Shariff Aguak to file on his behalf his certificate of candidacy for governor in the May 2010 local polls. 

“Genalyn told me the Ampatuans have plenty of money they can spend for the election, but that, even then, we still must try to overcome them via an election to end their impunity,” Tiamzon told Aquino in the presence of Mangudadatu, employees of the governor’s office  and journalists.

Members of the Ampatuan clan and their private army allegedly flagged down the convoy carrying Mrs. Mangudadatu and several relatives, and 32 journalists while on their way to Shariff Aguak. They were herded at gunpoint to a hill in Barangay Salman in Ampatuan municipality and, there, brutally killed with assault rifles and machine guns. 

Tiamzon said while she was so saddened with the death of Genalyn, she found comfort in prayers and in her spiritual conviction that everything in life happens as part of “kad’r,” meaning fate under Allah’s divine will. Tiamzon, whose original Christian first name was Nenita, said she embraced Islam on the 14th year as a couple of her daughter and the now Maguindanao provincial governor.