ARMM opens to public P1.2-B school building project bidding

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Regional officials, for the first time ever, opened to the public a bidding process for the construction of P1.2 billion worth of school buildings in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, where governance is synonymous with corruption and dirty politics.

The bidding process for the ARMM’s 2011 school building project, or SBP, held at the Office of the Regional Governor yesterday, was witnessed by dozens of reporters from different media outfits, officials of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, and people chosen at random from the rank and file of the regional education department.

Also present in the activity were representatives of the Philippine Information Agency in Region 12 and the Marine Battalion Landing Team 7 led by Lt. Col. Dorotheo Jose Jalandoni.

The ARMM’s executive secretary, lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, said they made the bidding process open to the public to set a precedent, and for incoming caretakers of the region to follow suit.

President Aquino, as a legal consequence of the law resetting the ARMM’s supposed August elections to 2013 which he signed last June 30, is to appoint an officer-in-charge for the autonomous region.

The ARMM has been under an acting governor, Ansarudin Adiong, since December 2009, following the suspension from office and detention of Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan in connection with the massacre on Nov. 23 of the same year of 57 people in Ampatuan municipality in Maguindanao.

“This is the first time, in the 21-year history of ARMM, that a bidding for a costly project was opened to public, open to members of the Fourth Estate,” said Moner Dayaan, a senior staffer of PIA-12.

Sinarimbo said the P1.2-billion SBP will be divided among all the five provinces and two cities covered by the autonomous region.

The ARMM’s education secretary, Bart Caudang, said teachers and education officials in each of the ARMM provinces and component cities would also be given lists and corresponding summaries of the cost of school buildings to be implemented in their respective areas.

The ARMM — covering Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao, all in mainland Mindanao, the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, and the cities of Marawi and Lamitan — is known for its moniker the country’s “electoral cheating capital,” with a bloated regional bureaucracy dubbed as milking cow of people at its helm.

“That is the perception we are trying to correct since the acting governor of ARMM assumed in December of 2009,” said Ali Macabalang, the region’s information director.

Incumbent ARMM officials are to relinquish the regional government to an incoming OIC when their terms end on September 30.

President Aquino is also to appoint a regional vice governor and members of the 24-seat Regional Assembly, dubbed as the region’s “little Congress,” by implication of the law that postponed the ARMM’s supposed August 8 elections.