A Philippine Problem

The Maguindanao Massacre has been rightly explained as the tragic, though rather extreme, consequence of the Philippine central government’s or the Arroyo administration’s well-known deliberate cultivation and patronage of the Ampatuan political warlord clan and dynasty as its main instrument for political control in Maguindanao province, if not also the rest of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Political control vis-à-vis political rivals or opponents of the Arroyo administration, and also vis-à-vis the main Moro rebel groups, notably the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) whose main provincial and ethnic base is Maguindanao. Thus, the characterization by some analysts of the Ampatuan clan as “political entrepreneurs” who have become “Malacanang’s monster (or Frankenstein).” This has been a symbiotic central-local axis of power, with mutual benefits also extending to wealth. The analysts have situated such local warlordism, apparently becoming more voracious and brazen in its arrogance of power, in the context of a conversely ever-weakening Philippine state.

The Maguindanao Massacre has again brought to fore, but more shockingly, the weaknesses of Philippine governance in the ungovernable “Wild, Wild West” of Muslim Mindanao. Among these weaknesses are “structural inequities in our political system, including control by an elite minority, traditional politicians and political dynasties, and enforcement of such control through private armies” – this itself already identified by the National Unification Commission (NUC) Consultations in 1992-93 as one of the root causes of the internal armed conflicts in the country. The NUC then had specific recommendations to address these root causes, including for establishing a regime of good governance, upholding respect for people’s rights and improving the administration of justice, and establishment of a pluralistic political society. But the ruling system has proven to be intractable and incorrigible to various on-and-off reform efforts.

And so, the heinous crime of political violence which is the Maguindanao Massacre is just the latest, though the most shocking, indictment of the Philippine political, electoral, security and justice system. The most immediate call or challenge is for justice and against impunity. Crime, esp. heinous crime, must be punished, but not necessarily with the restoration of the equally heinous death penalty. A criminal justice system deals properly not only with the offended and the offending parties but also with the witnesses – without whom there is no case, no due process, no establishment of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The willingness and safety of witnesses in the Maguindanao area in turn depend on a degree of protection, presumably mainly by the police, against threats to their lives from the private armies of the implicated political warlord clan there. Not only these private armies but also the Maguindanao police and their official auxiliaries (Civilian Volunteer Organizations or CVOs) as well as those of the military (Special CAFGU Active Auxiliaries or SCAAs) are part of the problem. Their dismantling and disarming (and not only those of the currently predominant Ampatuan clan) have become necessary to serve the ends not only of criminal justice and human security but also of the integrity of the coming 2010 electoral process – i.e. “ensuring free, orderly, honest, peaceful, and credible elections,” as constitutionally mandated.

But deputization of law enforcement agencies and instrumentalities for election duties will not be enough for the reform of the political and electoral system. It again bears noting that the second of three principles of the comprehensive peace process, as formulated out of the NUC Consultations, is that “It seeks to establish a genuinely pluralistic society, where all individuals and groups are free to engage in peaceful competition for predominance of their political programs without fear, through the exercise of rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, and where they may compete for political power through an electoral system that is free, fair and honest.” In addition, as far as the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to be deputized are concerned, there is also a great need for security sector reform. In short, the jolt that has come with the Maguindanao Massacre might as well be taken as an impetus not only for more effective immediate and short-term measures but also for a more thorough-going strategic process of reform, if not overhaul, of nothing less than the whole state of Philippine politics and governance.

A Bangsamoro Problem

Thus far, we have dealt with only one level, which we might call the Philippine problem. Because the Maguindanao Massacre happened in Muslim Mindanao mainly between two Moro political clans, there is also the level of the Bangsamoro Problem – which the Mindanao Peace Process is supposed to solve. This peace process, in grappling with the solution to the Bangsamoro Problem, should now consider local political warlordism of the Moro variety (which has its specific characteristics compared to the mainstream Filipino Christian variety) as part of that problem. To put it more clearly or concretely, will it be any different or better under a future negotiated entity of Bangsamoro self-determination and self-governance? What will be the internal political system in “a system of life and governance suitable and acceptable to the Bangsamoro people,” as “the end in view” sought by the MILF in the peace talks? To the extent that the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) considers the Bangsamoro people as part of the Filipino people, that “internal political system” is a valid concern of the GRP which is constitutionally mandated to look after the welfare of its people. Stated otherwise, why turn over partial sovereignty if this will mean throwing its people to the wolves?

So far, the main or key documents of the Mindanao Peace Process have not dealt specifically or concretely with Moro political warlordism, their private armies, intra-Moro political violence, clan grudge feuds called rido, and the “culture of the gun,” even though there have already been many incidents of intertwining or entanglement between the former and AFP-MILF armed hostilities. In the initialed but unsigned and aborted Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), the closest reference might be the provision empowering the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) to build, develop and maintain its own institutions — inclusive of electoral, police and internal security force, legal and judicial system — necessary for developing a progressive Bangsamoro society, the details of which are supposed to be discussed in the negotiation of the Comprehensive Compact.

This Comprehensive Compact is of course supposed to deal mainly with forging a better (because more just) structural relationship between the Philippine republic and the Bangsamoro people currently within this republic. But this should not mean waiting for this to be achieved first – whether in the form of higher (than ARMM) autonomy, federalism, or associative relationship – before being clear enough (at least having a blueprint) about the key internal affairs of whatever Bangsamoro self-determinative entity. It may in fact have to be the other way around, i.e. for all concerned (starting with the Bangsamoro people) to be fairly clear first about what we are getting into before getting into it. One question is, can this unfinished peace process be a source of hope for the sort of problem manifested by the Maguindanao Massacre?

The finished 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA) between the GRP and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), and for that matter the supposedly implementing Organic Act for the ARMM, Republic Act No. 9054, likewise do not deal specifically or concretely enough with the afore-mentioned problems related to Moro political warlordism. Their respective relevant provisions on the Special Regional Security Forces (SRSF) for the ARMM, presumably for the maintenance of public order and security there, have been a perennial bone of contention between the GRP and MNLF up to the currently ongoing tripartite review process regarding the FPA implementation. But perhaps even more telling than the provisions is the practice as far as the helmsmanship of the ARMM is concerned.

Three successive extended terms of MNLF governorship (first no less than MNLF Chairman Prof. Nur Misuari, then his former foreign minister Dr. Parouk Hussin) over the ARMM has been characterized, among others, as a failure of leadership for autonomy, peace and development (without absolving the culpability of the central government which established a low-intensity autonomy in the first place with the 1987 Constitution). And then this extended MNLF governorship could not prevent the eventual ascension of the traditional Moro political clan of the Ampatuans to the helm of the ARMM, but of course with the indispensible help of their friends in the Arroyo administration. The ARMM has since become the Ampatuan Regime in Muslim Mindanao. This kind of traditional Moro political leadership (just like the mainstream Filipino traditional politicians or “trapos”) and, sad to say, the failed MNLF leadership, do not at all inspire confidence as sources of hope for new and better politics and governance in Muslim Mindanao.

Yet, they somehow have to be part of the solution to the Bangsamoro problem. Asec. Camilo Montesa of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) has a good sense of this which he calls “1 Bangsamoro Challenge” (note rather than problem). He says “We, in the Philippine government, are slowly moving towards the direction of a closer, integrated response to this single, yet multi-faceted, 1 Bangsamoro Challenge. We cannot continue to deal with the MILF peace process, the MNLF peace process, the challenge to make ARMM work, and the threats posed by extremist groups like the JI and Abu Sayyaf as if they are separate and unrelated…. While we engage these groups differently, we want to engage them in view of all our other efforts across the other tables. In the end, we are talking about the same people, the same aspirations, the same problems and probably the same solutions.”

Some Problems for the Peace Process

Assuming that the Philippine government or side, ever fractious especially with the coming “big bang” elections, can semi-miraculously get its act together, the other side of the coin which needs this, perhaps even more miraculously, is the Bangsamoro side. The dynamics of division between the MNLF and MILF has not helped their presumably common cause for better self-determination for the Bangsamoro people. On top of that, they have both been often opposed by the traditional Moro political leadership in the different provinces of the ARMM, not to mention the Christian majority provinces in the vicinity. It is really more for the Bangsamoro side, rather than the Philippine government, to work on at least a critical level of intra-Moro unity. Perhaps, independent Bangsamoro civil society organizations and the ulama can help this unity process, as they have already been helping the peace process.

The Maguindanao Massacre and the central government response to it, some of which has been asked for and lauded by certain Moro quarters, might also have some longer-term negative implications for Bangsamoro self-determination and the peace process. The conceivable and possible end of Ampatuan dominance may be of only short-term benefit, especially for its political rivals – the Mangudadatu clan (already anointed by the Lakas-Kampi-CMD ruling party for the governorship of Maguindanao, but not yet the ARMM), and the MILF. The central government’s coming in strongly, though a bit delayed, with a political, military and prosecutorial show of force to take control of the volatile Maguindanao situation was/is necessary in the immediate term from the point of view of preventing further lawless violence and asserting Philippine governance and some rule of law. What in the recent past has been treated by the local people as militarization by AFP occupation forces is now probably seen by some of them as a welcome assurance of deterrence or protection against being caught in the crossfire of a dreaded all-out rido (if there was none before between the long-time allied Ampatuan and Mangudadatu clans, there certainly is basis for one now).

In the longer-term, what are the implications of all these for Bangsamoro self-determination and the peace process? One is that it will probably take longer not just because of current attention to and tension in the political clan situation in the Maguindanao area, also with the election period still to come in 2010. But also because of the more compelling need to tie together the various strands of the “1 Bangsamoro Challenge.” It is now in the context of this larger challenge that a different interpretation or application should perhaps be made of recent visitor U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s advice to “strike while the iron is hot.”

Another longer-term negative implication of the Maguindanao Massacre and the central government’s necessary immediate taking control of the situation there is the question it raises about the merits of Bangsamoro self-determination and self-governance. The political violence was essentially between two traditional Moro political clans, thus something intra-Moro, but which has had to take the central government to restore some law and order into the situation. For some, even on the Bangsamoro side, it seems that what is needed is stronger central government control – the anti-thesis of Bangsamoro self-determination. And if the central government can actually serve justice for the victims, which even the MILF is asking for, then this would be seen as a great service by the government to the Bangsamoro people. Why then not stick with this system of justice if it redeems itself in the Maguindanao Massacre case?

The Maguindanao Massacre can only reinforce the centuries-old anti-Moro bias of the mainstream Filipino Christian majority, which bias has consistently been behind their often knee-jerk opposition to any better Bangsamoro self-determination. The majority will see mainly the two antagonist Moro clans of the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus, as well as the many Christian journalist victims. They will not see who has long protected the Ampatuans and the other warlords, who has armed them, who has tolerated their abuses, and who has imposed them on the Bangsamoro people. Not only the “Satanic” Ampatuans but the entire Bangsamoro people, those “terrible Moros,” will be demonized by the Filipino majority and the aggrieved media. Only Moros can counter-act whatever unfair image of them, and it will have to be by deeds more than by words. One Moro friend has said, “The best the Moro can do is to face the consequence of this heinous political crime.”

These are times that call for Bangsamoro statesmanship as they also call for Filipino statesmanship. The latter is definitely not shown by those Filipino candidates for high office (from Senator up) who immediately opportunistically took advantage of the Maguindanao Massacre to project their political party (clue: they were among the most vocal against the MOA-AD). The MILF for its part took the opportunity to somewhat awkwardly call attention to the actually more heinous massacres of thousands of Moros by Philippine state forces like the Palimbang, Patikul, Pata, Manili, Kauswagan and Magsaysay Massacres for which justice has not been served to this day. So, perhaps one critical question in all these is, who can better serve justice?

The MILF may not be in a position to serve justice in the Maguindanao Massacre case where the main protagonists are not under its “jurisdiction.” But the MILF certainly has several recent cases under its jurisdiction, particularly its 102nd, 103rd and 105th base commanders whom it had acknowledged to have committed unsanctioned indignation attacks against Christian civilian communities in Central Mindanao in August 2008, and more recently its 113th base commander being implicated in the kidnapping of Irish priest Fr. Michael Sinnott last October. The MILF has yet to show convincingly, transparently and accountably that its own criminal or military justice system has served justice or even military discipline in these cases. When we often speak of “peace based on justice,” this could very well be one concrete application of this principle. The side that can and does act with justice, in both the criminal and political realms, must be the source of hope.

Santos is a Bicolano human rights and IHL lawyer; a peace advocate, researcher and writer; and the co-author of a forthcoming early 2010 book Primed and Purposeful: Armed Groups and Human Security Efforts in the Philippines to be co-published by his South-South Network (SSN) for Non-State Armed Group Engagement

The (hopefully) feigned betrayal stemmed from the stories I was writing at the time about the Ampatuan clan, how its members wielded power, and the sorry state of public education in the province of Maguindanao.

Gallows humor made the fear bearable back then, but now it has become clear that what I was dealing with was no laughing matter. In one barbaric, gruesome Monday morning, the monster created by clan wars, warlords, and the tacit approval – and exploitation of it – by high government officials claimed the lives of over 40 people, among them women and journalists, in one of the province’s lonely roads.

Maguindanao is a beautiful province. But its clear rivers and streams and green fields are red with the blood of some of its own people, as these had been in far too numerous instances in the past.

For now, Frances Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi, solicitor general of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao or ARMM, of which Maguindanao is part, is calling on media to be fair and not to preempt the investigation into Monday’s carnage.

“We are looking at different angles,” she told PCIJ in a brief phone interview Tuesday. “We are looking for the culprit and let’s wait for the result of the investigation.” She declined to make any other comments.

How does a local journalist cover Maguindanao? Based on what I witnessed while doing fieldwork for my stories last year, carefully – very, very carefully, as one would circle over a bomb that may or not go off.

One local journalist, for instance, had flatly refused my request for help in getting a face-to-face interview with Maguindanao’s Andal Ampatuan, the clan patriarch and chief executive of the province. The journalist had once accompanied a foreign colleague in interviewing the governor; when that story yielded an unflattering picture of Ampatuan, the local journalist was summoned to a dressing down in the old man’s mansion. He calmly took the barrage, convinced he could have faced much worse.

A handful of other local journalists also warned me against crossing the Ampatuan clan, but they were helpful enough to get me in touch with Norie Unas, the provincial administrator. Unas told me that the governor would not agree to an interview.

Ampatuan rarely goes to the capitol. It is the capitol, via Unas, that goes to Ampatuan. The governor conducts business in his mansion just across the newly-built capitol.

Almost every month, the old Ampatuan and members of his clan go to Manila, but his security cordon remains as tight as that in Maguindanao. The same is true for other officials in ARMM. I counted four security people assigned to an ARMM department head who I interviewed in Manila.

Journalists, of course, rarely have any security detail – even in places where having one could be a good idea.

Needing a picture for the story I was doing on education in Maguindanao, I asked a photographer in the region for some shots of students or schools there. What he sent were “happy pictures” of students seemingly drowning in books and other resources. He said he had taken them during one of those school visits arranged by local officials.

The pictures didn’t quite go with what I had seen and written about — the dismal state of education in the province. And so I requested other shots, but was rebuffed politely. It was explained to me that even while the photographer was based in a city several provinces away, the risk would be the same.

I needed other pictures for my story about the Ampatuans, and I stumbled upon a photo of some members of the clan with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in Malacanang. But the photographer refused to have his work associated with my story, saying the Ampatuans knew he had taken it.

It is not difficult to appreciate the fear. Despite having asked Unas for permission to take pictures of the façade of the newly-built capitol, I was only able to take half a dozen, most of them embarrassingly ugly. The capitol’s fatigue-clad guard kept on shooing me away, and my camera was no match for his armalite.

A Manila-based journalist also recalls instructing her cameraman to take footage of the expensive 4x 4s in the ARMM head office’s parking lot – and ending up with no shot. Armed men who ordered them to leave the area made sure of that.

Sheer ignorance may make non-ARMM journalists willing to go farther than their local counterparts, but wariness soon creeps in. While locals refer visiting journalists doing stories on Maguindanao to two hotels in Cotabato City, the suggestions come with comments that one can easily be traced in these places. Locals also make it a point to say that although Cotabato City is closer to Shariff Aguak, the capital of Maguindanao, than Tacurong City, the latter’s larger population can be a refuge.

Visitors to Maguindanao are advised to be indoors before it gets dark, a dictum closely observed even by locals. And while there is greater anonymity in taking public transport, the presence of tanks and clumps of uniformed and armed men in many areas do not calm the nerves of someone not accustomed to them.

For sure, covering Maguindanao poses unique problems. A hit-and-run tactic by parachute journalists prevents them from staying informed and updated, but local journalists may not want to venture far enough either because they fear their whereabouts can be traced. A source, meanwhile, can be easily threatened, no matter how high his or her position in government is.

These became apparent to me while I was there, but I was reminded of this again weeks before my stories on Maguindanao and the Ampatuan clan were to come out: The PCIJ suddenly received word from a fellow journalist that a member of the clan was making inquiries about me.

That prompted someone in the PCIJ to buy me a shirt that said, “Every time I have a great idea, I get into trouble.” – PCIJ, November 2009

As of Monday night, authorities have found at least 21 mutilated bodies in Masalay, Datu Abdullah Sangki town in Maguindanao. They are believed to belong to a group of 50 people, including 30 local journalists, that departed Buluan town earlier in the day to witness the filing of the certificate of candidacy of gubernatorial hopeful Ishmael Mangudadatu at the Comelec office in Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao.

Authorities say the convoy was waylaid by a large group of armed men; Mangudadatu insists that the men were led by his political rival, Andal Ampatuan. Ishmael himself avoided filing his certificate of candidacy in person because of political tensions between him and Ampatuan. Instead, he sent his wife Genalyn and other female relatives, hoping that the females and the accompanying journalists would defuse the tension.

As of press time however, authorities have still not found the other members of the convoy. Instead, army officials say they recovered the mutilated bodies of 13 women and eight men. Some of the bodies have already been identified as belonging to people from the ill-fated convoy. Their vehicles were recovered by the highway, the contents ransacked of all valuables.

Media groups also fear for the lives of the missing journalists who accompanied the convoy. The Philippine Daily Inquirer says that some 37 journalists signed an attendance sheet just before the convoy left Buluan town at 9am. It would be the single largest group of journalists captured or held hostage in the world.

While Moros have always been proud of both their long history of resistance and a rich and colorful culture, politics in many areas in Muslim Mindanao are still overshadowed by the influence of powerful clans that dictate both affiliations and allegiances, especially in long-running blood feuds called rido. These clans hold sway over their areas much like feudal overlords of old, with the power of life or death over their subjects at their fingertips.

The private armies of these ruling clans are, for all intents and purposes, also funded through government coffers. Since the local government code allows local officials to choose their local police chiefs, many local policemen are ineffectual at best, or act as bodyguards of the local mayor or congressman. In addition, local officials have also effectively used the threat of the Moro secessionist movement in the area to deputize and arm their own men using taxpayers’ money. These deputies or militiamen are called civilian volunteer officers, or CVOs, who join occasional military operations, but for the most part merely take orders from local officials.

In the wake of Monday’s incident in Maguindanao, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism revisits several stories the Center has published on Maguindanao’s culture and politics, and its culture of politics.

Our former deputy executive director Jaileen Jimeno wrote a series of stories in 2008 that focused on the province. “Amid the fighting, the clan rules in Maguindanao” looked at the influential Ampatuan clan and its close ties to Malacanang: “(Analysts) note that no less than the Palace made it legal for the Ampatuans to have hundreds of armed men and women under their employ. The 1987 Constitution bans private armed groups. In July 2006, however, the Arroyo administration issued Executive Order 546, allowing local officials and the PNP to deputize barangay tanods as ‘force multipliers’ in the fight against insurgents. In practice, the EO allows local officials to convert their private armed groups into legal entities with a fancy name: civilian volunteer organizations (CVO).”

A sidebar, “Young guns, young terror” focused on how private armies in Maguindanao are filled by young recruits. Meanwhile, “Maguindanao, RP fall behind key indicators for education” examined how the province has been falling behind Millennium Development Goals for education, a situation exacerbated by armed conflict in the region.

In 2006, journalist Samira Gutoc penned a first-person piece about being a journalist in Mindanao, and the challenges idealistic young Moros face as they struggle to bring about change to the region.

Gutoc was part of a documentary project with Howie Severino in 2002 that focused on the conflict in Mindanao as well as efforts of the people there to move beyond the conflict. In a story for the PCIJ, Severino noted how, while the conflict between the government and various rebel groups hog the headlines, minor wars between feuding families generally went unreported.

Recently, the PCIJ also published a photo essay by Nonoy Espina on mostly-forgotten refugees in Maguindanao, which underscores the role journalists play to bring to light the plight of people in the conflict-ridden area.

Maguindanao, as one of the five poorest provinces in the country, is also part of Suriin ang Kahirapan, a PCIJ crowdsourcing project that aims to audit the poverty in these places.

In this issue:

• Gloria’s inglorious record: Biggest debtor, least popular
• The economy
  Misplaced government spending worsens woes
• ‘Dubious’ oil price hikes hurt the poorest most
• Romulo L. Neri: Can golf, realpolitik work at SSS?
• Perspectives
  That bumpy ride called democracy
• First person: August 21, 1983
  A million came for Ninoy as reporters battled with censors
• On the 25th year of the Aquino assassination
  Noynoy, Nene, Joker remember Ninoy
• They all remember Ninoy, too
• Public Eye
  Amid the fighting, the clan rules in Maguindanao
• Young guns, young terror

ALL OVER the world, the practice of engaging children and teenagers in criminal gangs and private armies continues unabated. The Philippines is no exception.

A little-known academic study documents how minors are being recruited down south in private armies better known as civilian volunteers organizations or CVOs. These groups help keep village adults in a perpetual state of fear and obeisance, even if some of the “volunteers” have not moved past puberty.

The 80-page study was conducted across a five-month period in 2003 by researchers led by Agnes Zenaida Camacho of the University Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UCIDS) at the University of the Philippines.

It focused on three towns of Maguindanao and the use of minors by the pagali or clan to keep itself in power. The researchers interviewed 10 young CVO members, who had to be assigned pseudonyms in the report, for their own protection.

Most of the young CVO members were recruited into the armed group as replacement for their fathers who had been killed in action, the researchers learned. Of the 10 interviewees, only two were 18 years old at the time they started working for a pagali. One interviewee was drafted into CVO service when he was only 10 years old, and the seven others, in their early teens.

UCIDS noted that while the CVOs were organized to assist in defending towns against insurgents, “in certain parts of the Philippines, local politicians are reportedly heavily arming and using members of CVOs in their respective localities as private armies.”

An unpaid family loan to the pagali compelled one child to join the CVO. Yet when he was ready to pay, the pagali head, a mayor, gave the child a gun and ordered him to kill someone before his payment would be accepted. Left with no choice, the child said he did as he was told.

Disobedience entails serious punishment. “Failing to follow orders to murder a pagali enemy is punishable by death,” the researchers said.

For most of the interviewees, however, conscription into the CVO unfolds as a slow process. The new entrants are given small jobs at first, like escorting members of the clan when they venture outside their homes. The recruits do this with issued firearms in tow. Once their loyalty and adherence to the code of silence is proven, they are inducted into “malalaking lakad (big jobs),” mainly involving crime, the researchers said.

“From the interviews with the children, these range from kidnapping, extortion, instigating displacement, murder, torture, and drug trafficking,” the report said.

Among the most benign activities that the CVO members said they did was to collect P20 from vehicles passing the highway. There are other tasks. An interviewee said he was assigned to a pagali’s marijuana plantation near the province’s marshlands.

Others said they served in the pagali‘s “business” ventures, including dealing in shabu or metamphetamine hydrochloride, and doubled as dealers. The report said the illegal trade reached as far as General Santos City, Davao City, and Manila, the report revealed.

To one interviewee, these transactions explain how a pagali could afford to live it up. “How do you think they are able to afford a mansion or luxury cars?” the interviewee asked.

The report unravelled more details. “Another child interviewee said that the pagali in his area, a mayor, conducted ‘operations’ or raids against selected areas particularly after the rice harvesting season — to steal the crops after the residents of the target areas had evacuated their homes and farms.”

“I guess that’s why some CVOs have gotten used to stealing,” the researchers said, quoting one of the interviewees as saying. “When you think about it, the mayor is really behind everything.”

The UCIDS study abound with even more gruesome stories, notably one told by “Rudy,” who was recruited into a CVO unit when he was 17.

A scion of the pagali had been killed in a bomb blast, and soon after, three teenagers suspected of involvement were brought to the compound of another son of the clan’s chief.

The three suspects met tragic deaths. “One was killed using machetes, while another was peppered with bullets,” the UCIDS report said Rudy had recounted. “The eldest of the youths suffered the worst: his limbs were cut off using a chain saw.”

The CVO members were directed to put salt in the suspect’s wounds and then “(they) cut parts of his body with a chain saw while he was still alive,” Rudy had narrated. The CVO members present were later instructed to dump the suspects’ bodies in a nearby river.

What might well pass for a culture of keeping armed men could be likened to “pagali dictatorship,” according to the researchers. Apart from ensuring the clan’s dominance, it accords a pagali an aura of machismo.

By their reckoning, the researchers said that the higher the position of an official, the more armed men he commands, but most especially if he is the leader of the clan or occupies an important position in the pagali.

Yet for all the unwholesome duties they perform for the pagali, CVO members collect paltry pay. Their salaries vary, with some receiving P1,000 a month, and others, P3,000.

On occasion, when the pagali boss is feeling generous, they get a bonus of rice and clothes.

Rudy, however, has not been as blessed with such windfall. In fact, he said that for a long time, he did not get whatever benefits he was supposed to. And months after he was interviewed by the UCIDS researchers, Rudy was killed in a encounter between soldiers and separatist rebels. He was 25.

Still and all, the “chainsaw story” he told the researchers has somehow outlived Rudy. By all indications, he had evolved into a legend of sort in Maguindanao.

When the PCIJ visited recently, some village folk said they know who were behind the gruesome murders and where these happened. Advisedly, they said that they are too scared to go on record on this story or they might be the next ones to hear the buzz of a chain saw.

In this issue:

• Gloria’s inglorious record: Biggest debtor, least popular
• The economy
  Misplaced government spending worsens woes
• ‘Dubious’ oil price hikes hurt the poorest most
• Romulo L. Neri: Can golf, realpolitik work at SSS?
• Perspectives
  That bumpy ride called democracy
• First person: August 21, 1983
  A million came for Ninoy as reporters battled with censors
• On the 25th year of the Aquino assassination
  Noynoy, Nene, Joker remember Ninoy
• They all remember Ninoy, too
• Public Eye
  Amid the fighting, the clan rules in Maguindanao
• Young guns, young terror

MAGUINDANAO — The sound of sirens precedes the passing of a long convoy of 4×4 sport utility vehicles. As if on cue, jeepneys and private vehicles begin moving to the right side of the street, where they all then ground to halt.

“Kailangan tumabi ka, kasi babanggain ka nila. Palalabasin nilang kaaway ka (You have to get out of their way, otherwise they’ll hit your car. And then they’ll make it appear you’re one of their enemies),” explains an old man watching the scene by the roadside.

Asked if he knows whose convoy of black, heavily tinted vehicles is whizzing by, the man replies without hesitation: “Si Governor. Ganyan ang mga sasakyan niya (That’s how his vehicles look like).”

In the last two weeks, this southern province has become one of the sites of a serial cat-and-mouse battle between soldiers and rebels from a faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), displacing thousands of people. But the armed clashes aside, residents here know that only one family wields real power in Maguindanao: the Ampatuans, led by its acknowledged patriarch, Governor Andal Ampatuan.

It may not only be peace between combatants but respite from political clans that Maguindanao needs.

The Ampatuans are just the latest in a long line of political dynasties that have endured in Mindanao. Yet while the Ampatuan clan has lorded over Maguindanao only since 2001, several of its members have already managed to grab key government positions, elective and appointive, and not only in the province itself. (see Table)

In 2005, Andal Ampatuan’s son Zaldy, then 38 years old, became the governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the youngest ever to head the regional government.

And if the results of the recent AMMM polls are any indication, the Ampatuans seem to be digging in for the long haul. The baby-faced Zaldy took more than 90 percent of the votes among seven candidates in the ARMM elections held just a few weeks ago. His closest rival Indanan Mayor Alvarez Isnaji got just a tad over two percent of the votes.

It did not help Isnaji any that he was battling kidnapping charges filed by the Philippine National Police (PNP) against him and his son Haider, midway through the campaign. But Ma. Krizna Gomez of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE) observes: “We were all surprised to not see any election campaign materials (other than Zaldy Ampatuan’s) around the province. The dynasty runs deep into the entire political set-up and this is capped by the election result itself.”

Guns, Palace blessing

Andal Ampatuan has four wives and over 30 children, and intermarriages with other political clans have made his political stock stronger. But political analysts trace the clan’s formidable clout to two main factors: guns and the blessings of Malacanang. They even note that no less than the Palace made it legal for the Ampatuans to have hundreds of armed men and women under their employ.

The 1987 Constitution bans private armed groups. In July 2006, however, the Arroyo administration issued Executive Order 546, allowing local officials and the PNP to deputize barangay tanods as “force multipliers” in the fight against insurgents. In practice, the EO allows local officials to convert their private armed groups into legal entities with a fancy name: civilian volunteer organizations (CVO).

Interestingly, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo issued the EO just weeks after a bombing in the Shariff Aguak public market that killed five people. Andal Ampatuan, who has survived several other ambushes, was said to have been the target.

According to a military officer who served for 16 years in ARMM — five of them in Maguindanao — Andal Ampatuan employs about 200 CVO members. The officer adds that Ampatuan’s sons and relatives maintain armed men, supposedly for their protection. (Andal’s eldest son Saudi was killed in a bomb blast in Shariff Aguak 2002.)

“Everybody carries firearms, mga paltik (homemade guns),” says the military officer. “Or (they) either borrow from the military or the PNP, or they buy.”

A soldier who spent five years on assignment in Maguindanao says of the CVOs here: “They support the internal security requirement of the capitol or the municipio.” He adds that while some of the CVOs are paid by the local government in areas where they serve, they are often “borrowed” for personal use by local officials.

And whenever they board the back of spiffy pickups that are staples of Ampatuan convoys, these CVO members typically lug long firearms. At times, the convoys of 20 vehicles or more also begin and end with pickups mounted with big machine guns.

Indeed, long before the military resumed chasing the MILF in earnest across the region, Maguindanao was already dotted with checkpoints. Soldiers manned entrances to municipal halls, and armored vehicles hogged major road networks.

PCIJ tried for months to interview Andal Ampatuan here and during his visits in Manila, but Maguindanao provincial administrator Norie Unas repeatedly said the governor does not grant interviews. Instead, it has been Unas who has fielded questions from PCIJ.

In an interview with PCIJ late last year, Unas said that the older Ampatuan’s political stance has earned his clan several enemies, hence the need for heightened security. Unas explained that while previous Maguindanao leaders played footsies with secessionist forces, “Governor Ampatuan is not really sympathetic to the MILF or other forces wishing for a separatist Muslim state.”

But Datu Michael Mastura, former congressman of Maguindanao’s first district, seems less than convinced by the argument. “I will tell you, the word ‘impunity’ does not even suit it. It’s inappropriate,” he says, referring to the Ampatuans’ chronic show of force. Pointing to the clan’s numerous bodyguards and vehicles, Mastura wonders aloud: “Just imagine, how do you maintain them? How do you house them?”

No one here is ready to come forward with any answers to that, but at the very least, the presence of armed men and women helps explain why residents would rather not do anything to cross an Ampatuan. One journalist who unwittingly did is certainly thankful that all he got was a dressing-down from the provincial governor.

The journalist had helped a colleague get in touch with the Ampatuans for an article that the governor apparently perceived to be unflattering. The helpful journalist says he was summoned to the governor’s mansion and there received a tongue-lashing. “I just sat there,” he recalls, “and took it, not saying a word.”

‘Hello, Garci’ then 12-0 in ’07

To some political analysts, it is easy to explain why the Ampatuans command solid hold on Maguindanao: The clan enjoys close ties with the Palace in faraway Manila, simply because the clan has managed to deliver the votes for administration candidates.

In its 2007 Elections Forensics Report, the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) noted: “The Ampatuan dynasty based in Maguindanao province is Arroyo’s present conduit in helping ensure her influence over the whole of Mindanao, which hosts many of the country’s grizzled but otherwise powerful political clans.”

During the 2004 presidential elections, “(Governor Andal) Ampatuan addressed the political requirement of Arroyo,” says Bobby Tuazon, CenPEG’s director for policy study, publication, and advocacy. “She needed somebody to control the votes.”

In the controversial “Hello Garci” recordings, then elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano was heard saying that Maguindanao would not be “much of a problem” for President Arroyo. His words turned out to be more than prophetic, with Maguindanao giving Arroyo 193,938 votes, against the 59,892 votes obtained by popular action film star Fernando Poe Jr. In Ampatuan and Datu Piang towns, Poe even scored zero, and in the capital Shariff Aguak and other Maguindanao towns, received just a handful of votes.

In the 2007 congressional and local elections, the 12 senatorial candidates of the administration’s Team Unity slate made a clean sweep of the polls in Maguindanao, or scored 12-0, to be exact. Family members and allies of the Ampatuans who ran for local positions also clinched wins.

Maguindanao officials have since brushed off suspicions of election fraud, saying local candidates did not bother campaigning for their own seats. They say that “negotiations” were held before the elections to “amicably” settle the battle for positions. Besides, they note, many of the Ampatuan candidates had run unopposed and thus had devoted time to campaign for the administration’s senatorial slate.

In his interview with PCIJ last year, Maguindanao provincial administrator Unas said political contests here are settled even before any balloting through “consultation and consensus-building.”

“People are critical of our system and ridicule us for the manner by which we choose our leaders,” he said. But, he asserted, it is a system that works for the province, “not that demo-democracy.”

“We know that the Manila system does not fit us,” Unas said. “We have stabilized the political landscape because there’s no contest every election. This is one better way for us Muslims coming out with our leaders.”

CenPEG fellow Ely H. Manalansan Jr., however, insists that shura or the Islamic practice of consultation was not a factor in Team Unity’s 12-0 win in Maguindanao. He says that even Islamic experts dismiss such an assertion, adding, “(It) merely serves as a justification for the widespread and systematic fraud perpetrated by the administration during elections in Mindanao.”

Last year, public schoolteacher Musa Dimasidsing had also revealed that days before the 2007 vote, he had seen teachers and students writing and then putting their thumbmarks on ballots. Days after he spoke up, Dimasidsing was shot dead; his murder remains unsolved.

No ‘Big Man’ monopoly

CenPEG’s Tuazon, though, cautions against stereotyping this conduct of elections as unique to Maguindanao and ARMM. “Oligarchs also rule in Luzon and Visayas, and you will see a lot of similarities in what is happening there in the Moro homeland,” he says.

“Ampatuan is no different from (Luis) Chavit Singson,” points out Fr. Eliseo Mercado Jr., who briefly chaired the government peace panel with the MILF. Singson, former governor of Ilocos Sur in northern Luzon, has built a reputation for keeping an iron grip on his home province.

Unas himself acknowledges the perception that Ampatuan is a warlord. Reached by phone by PCIJ recently, he said, “May katotohanan din siguro. The same way na may perception na warlord sina Joson (of Nueva Ecija) at Singson, (Probably there’s truth to that. The same way there is a perception that the Josons and the Singsons are warlords).”

But the provincial administrator denied that the capitol pays for the CVOs protecting Ampatuan and his clan. He said that the CVOs are hired and funded by town mayors, while those who guard the governor are made up of soldiers, policemen, and civilians “who, as Muslims, will die for their leader.”

This relationship between leaders and the governed, said Unas, has its roots in the history of Muslim communities down south, and is found not only in Maguindanao.

Poverty, mega projects

In Mercado’s view, the resiliency of the Ampatuan clan will rest mainly on its ability to deliver the needs of its constituents. Then again, if Mercado is right, the Ampatuans’ days in power may be numbered, based on the province’s sorry showing in several sectors.

For one, despite the Ampatuans’ expanded powerbase, Maguindanao’s poverty numbers are worsening. In 2000, the poverty incidence was recorded at 59.3 percent. It grew to 60.4 percent in 2003, and rose further to 62 percent in 2006, turning Maguindanao into the third poorest province in the country.

For another, Maguindanao’s spending for education remains low, even as the elementary teacher-to-pupil ratio has worsened to 51 in school year 2005-06, from 43.9 in school year 2000-01.

These bad statistics are among the reasons why, according to the Philippine Human Development Report (PHDR) of 2005, only 39.7 percent of adults in Maguindanao have six years of basic education, compared with the national average of 84 percent.

Too, the PHDR reveals that Maguindanao has the second lowest life expectancy in the Philippines at 52 years, edged out only by Tawi-Tawi’s 51.2 years. The National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) reports as well that the number of health stations in the province has remained stagnant at 163, from 2000 to 2006.

Amid worsening poverty and education services for its population of 600,000 as of last year, Maguindanao has been pouring money into new town halls and a bigger capitol. The latter is now estimated to cost the province about P116 million, or nearly twice as much as the original price tag of P60 million.

According to Unas, Andal Ampatuan had asked President Arroyo for help in funding the new capitol project. Arroyo, Unas said, committed an initial P20 million, paving the way for construction work to start.

The renovation project has since evolved into a government center that will feature other huge structures, including a sports-and-culture center that would cost P80 million.

Maguindanao is not lacking in funds. On top of benefiting from foreign and ARMM-funded projects, it received an internal revenue allotment (IRA) of P555 million in 2005, which grew to P633 million the following year.

Yet of the P590 million budget the capitol lined up for 2006, P124 million or 21 percent was set aside for the provincial governor’s office alone. Over P185 million or 31 percent, meanwhile, went to the salaries and benefits of the capitol’s 587 employees.

The people’s view

The people in Maguindanao offer a common opinion of Andal Ampatuan as “mabait (a good person).” One resident says, “If you need a job, he’ll provide one for you.” Another intones, “We don’t say no to him because he takes care of us.”

But such positive comments almost always come with a caveat: “Basta sundin mo ang gusto niya (As long as you do as he says).”

“He is like a pharaoh, that’s what people call him,” says Mastura, himself a member of one of Mindanao’s prominent families. “You don’t go against his wishes.”

The one person who has tried to keep the Ampatuans in check, albeit in his own turf, is Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

Over the years, Duterte, who is known for his tough stance against crime, has repeatedly warned various clans — not only the Ampatuans, to be sure — against “misbehaving” in Davao City. But Duterte has also zeroed in on younger Ampatuan scions for using sirens whenever they drive around Davao. In 2006, Duterte let it rip when three Ampatuan youths were arrested in his city for possession of high-powered firearms, including rifles fitted with telescopic sights, and rounds of ammunition.

“Davao City is not your kingdom,” a fuming Duterte had reportedly said. “If you want to show off, you better do it in your place, not here.”

Unfortunately for Duterte, Maguindanao has no known nightlife to keep privileged youths entertained and occupied.

Once the sun sets in this province, the roads turn empty, save for one or two vehicles rushing to their destinations, and the occasional convoy of huge, black cars and pickups flashing their lights and sounding their sirens. Invariably, the convoy carries an Ampatuan as passenger.

However, this three-part series of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism shows that the Arroyo administration is falling behind all key indicators of progress in a most strategic goal: education.

In faraway Maguindanao and nearby Las Piñas, more children are failing to enroll and stay in school, and the ratio of students to teachers, classrooms and books is getting worse. These problems gain more urgency as schools start preparing for the opening of the new schoolyear in the next fortnight.

A TOWN IN MAGUINDANAO — Ten-year-old Dino and two younger boys were harassing a hapless chicken under a neighbor’s nipa house. Covered with dust, the boys obviously hadn’t had a bath just yet that day, and had chosen to go after the chicken while other children in this village trooped to a nearby river to soak and to play.

It looked like a typical village scene — only that it was the middle of a school day and Dino (not his real name) and many of the children should have been in class. But the classrooms in Dino’s school were shuttered because its four teachers were attending a meeting in the capital.

IN Maguindanao, children are often not in school because there are more class suspensions than actual sessions. [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

In fact, they had been away — supposedly for meetings — for two weeks already, and no one was sure when they would be returning. Residents here also said the primary school had had more class suspensions than actual sessions, which made the children quite happy, but had their parents upset.

A mother of three whose children go to the same school as Dino’s said she and other parents had repeatedly pleaded with local education officials to appoint more teachers. “We complained because classes are rarely held,” said the parent, who like several interviewees here requested anonymity for herself and this town. “They told us to go to the district office ourselves and request for regular teachers.”

Achieving universal primary education is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that the Philippines has committed itself to achieve by 2015. In its midterm progress report on the MDGs that was released last year, however, the government conceded that this was one of the goals it was unlikely to meet seven years from now.

Floundering goals

Since the Arroyo administration came to power in 2001, all key performance indicators in education in fact have floundered. The percentage of schoolchildren who reach up to grade six, for instance, is down from a high of 75.9 percent in 2001 to 69.9 percent in 2006. Elementary dropout rate in 2001 was 5.75 percent, but went up to 7.36 in 2006. Those who repeat a grade is also up, from 1.95 percent in 2001 to 2.89 percent in 2006.

It’s not hard to see what led to these numbers, especially in this province that is about 1,000 kilometers south of Manila. Then again, Maguindanao is not the only place in the Philippines suffering from chronic lack of teachers, which in turn is only one of the many problems bedeviling schools here and elsewhere in the country, including those in prosperous urban areas. In large part, these problems can be traced to two main factors: a decline in per capita spending for education and a booming population.

Per capita spending for education in 1996 was pegged at P1,108. In 2006, it was merely P1,014. The figure was even lower in 2005, at P975. In the last decade, the highest per capita spending for education was P1,337, and that was back in 1998. All these were even as the country’s population continued to climb, ensuring a deluge of students for decades.

	Location map of Maguindanao courtesy of Wikipedia

But here in Maguindanao, the situation is made worse by bursts of armed conflict that keep students and their teachers away from schools for days on end, as well as by apparently skewed local priorities. As a result, the Philippine Human Development Report of 2005 says only 39.7 percent of adults in Maguindanao have six years of basic education, compared to the national average of 84 percent. The literacy rate in Maguindanao is 66.27, compared to the national average of 92.3. In 1994, the Philippines’ literacy rate was recorded at 93.9 percent.

Wrong figures

Maguindanao is one of the eight provinces belonging to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Official statistics show that more than half of the region’s estimated three million people live in extreme poverty.

The National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) estimated in 2003 that poverty incidence in Maguindanao was at 60.4 percent. This makes many of the province’s half a million people the target beneficiaries of MDG No. 1, which aims to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

Provincial administrator Norie Unas, however, has begged to disagree with the NSCB’s 2003 figure. “We have castigated the NSO (National Statistics Office, which did the survey) for that,” he told PCIJ late last year.

He said ARMM’s Regional Planning and Development Office has a lot of socio-economic indicators “that prove the releases of the NSO are wrong.” He did not go into specifics, but made it a point to stress that he was told by NSO that “the bases of lining up Maguindanao among the poorest of the provinces (were) data prior to the administration of Governor (Andal) Ampatuan.”

Ampatuan began his term in 2001. He was reelected in 2004, and another win in 2007 now has him serving his third and last term. Since the PCIJ interviewed Unas, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) has released fresh figures that show the poverty incidence in Maguindanao shooting up to 62 percent in 2006, a steep rise from 41.6 percent in 1997. The province is now the third poorest in the country, coming after Tawi-Tawi and Zamboanga del Norte.

MAGUINDANAO Provincial Administrator Norie Unas [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

In any case, Unas may find it hard to argue with development experts who say education is crucial in fighting poverty. University of the Philippines College of Education Dean Vivien Talisayon says, “education levels the playing field.”

Mix of rich, poor

And there is much leveling to do in Maguindanao. When wails of sirens break the silence enveloping most farming villages near the highway, vehicles immediately take the shoulder to make way for long convoys of hulking SUVs. According to residents, the convoys belong to politicians who may be on their way to Cotabato City or are bringing their children to school that are likely outside the province.

Maguindanao’s well-scrubbed and powerful send their children to private schools either in Cotabato or Davao City. Which is just as well because there is hardly any breathing room in the public schools here. In chicken-chasing Dino’s school, there are 278 students and four classrooms, which if made to DepEd standards should measure about 63 square meters each.

In schoolyear 2005-2006, Maguindanao’s education department reported an enrolment of 135,990 students in elementary school, the highest in ARMM. But, says a study funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) from August 2005 up to January 2007, the schools counted only 50,204 usable seats for the students.

There was also a critical shortage of textbooks. While elementary students were already numbering more than 100,000, the schools had a total of only 30,952 textbooks for Math, 34,039 for English, 28,810 for Filipino, and 25,697 for Science.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGO) working here have yet to come up with a solution to the textbook shortage, but one group has shanghaied parents to make chairs, benches, and tables, which are then donated to their barangay schools.

It could well be that the schools were simply overwhelmed by the sudden surge in student numbers, and thus found themselves with all sorts of shortages. Last October, the province’s planning office was jolted by the preliminary results of the government’s census: Maguindanao registered a population growth rate of 5.4 percent, more than twice the national figure of 2.3 percent. In 2000, Maguindanao already had one of the highest population growth rates in the country, at 4.16 percent.

Defying trends

“The recent census brought us some almost incredible figure of increase,” said Unas. “We defied established demographic trends.”

He added that this was probably because of an improved peace and order situation in Maguindanao, prompting, he said, people from other Mindanao provinces to settle here. Yet Maguindanao sees few people in the streets after sundown, a sign of a still-jittery population that has lived with the internecine fighting between clans, warlords, and government troops, and secessionist forces. That most of the people interviewed by PCIJ declined to be named is telling in itself.

The province’s planning office, meanwhile, said the increase in population growth rate may be the result of factors like multiple marriages, teenage marriages, return of overseas Filipino workers, late registration of newborns, and resettlement of former rebels. It also admitted to a lack of an effective, province-wide reproductive health program.

Many of the schools’ problems, however, would have probably been eased had the local government decided to pick up the slack in the national government’s spending for education.

For sure, the province’s internal revenue allotment (IRA) has not been measly. In 2005, it received over P555 million in IRA. The next year, it got P633 million.

Big personnel budget

Based on its Commission on Audit (COA) submissions in 2005 and 2006, the province spent as much as 30 percent of its budget on personnel salaries. In fact, it allocated an additional P30 million for its employees in 2006, raising the budget from P154 million in 2005 to P185 million the following year. Its maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) for those two years were more than half its total budget, from P294 million in 2005, to P389 million in 2006.

In 2006, it allocated P10 million for the secretary to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan, while the provincial treasurer — who collected P1.1 million from taxpayers in 2005, and P2.7 million in 2006 — was allotted P16.8 million.

By comparison, it set aside P238,397 for the salary of its education personnel, with an MOOE of P1.6 million for that department.

THE Maguindanao provincial capitol [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

5 teachers per barangay

Data from Maguindanao’s DepEd show that the province’s elementary and high schools have a total of 1,340 permanent teachers and 52 contractual teachers. That means there is only an average of less than five teachers in each of Maguindanao’s 279 barangays.

The number of teachers who actually teach, however, diminishes when they are called on to handle administrative matters. Dino’s teacher, for example, is also the school principal, which is why the classes she handles are suspended whenever she has meetings or seminars to attend either in the capital, Shariff Aguak, or the ARMM’s seat of power, Cotabato City.

Yet the few schoolteachers there complain that their pay is often delayed, sometimes even for months. With little incentive for professionals to apply, there is thus a heavy dependence on volunteer teachers, who have usually reached high school at least and are able to teach basic reading and writing. These volunteer teachers get about P3,000 per month. Often, half the amount is sourced from barangay funds, while parents chip in to cover the other half. Problems occur whenever some parents are unable to cough up their share.

One mother here said that each family contributes P30 every month for each child it sends to school. She and her husband have three school-age children, which means they have to come up with P90 each month; she has resorted to selling charcoal to raise the amount.

The mother said she dreads the time when they will have to produce P50 every day for the transportation fare of each of their children, who will have to go farther to attend Grades 5 and 6.

Their barangay is five kilometers of boulders-strewn road away from the highway, accessible only by habal-habal or motorcycles for hire. From there, the children would have to take another ride before reaching a school that conducts classes in grade levels higher than the one they are now attending.

Asked for the province’s budget allocations for education and the building of classrooms since 2001, Maguindanao’s budget office said it had “no data” on these items.

No school built since 2001

Data from both the province’s budget and education offices indicate, however, that the province has not allocated any part of its public-works fund to build schools since 2001.

Still, the province has poured millions of pesos into other infrastructure projects. In 2006 alone, the 22-town province spent more than P91 million in 37 road rehabilitation projects, with just one costing less than P1 million. Roughly a third of the projects were for roads in Shariff Aguak.

A kapitolyo insider said that last year, the planning office had tried to set aside P100,000 for an information campaign to familiarize the province’s mayors with the MDGs. “We wanted to incorporate the MDGs in the province’s goals,” said the insider, “but the proposal and the funding was junked.”

And that may be why, when an ARMM information officer was queried for data on the region’s MDG programs, he had to ask what the three letters meant.

Meantime, Dino may have difficulty recognizing any letter of the alphabet. At 10, he is still unable to read.

CHANGING FACE. Muslim women are slowly moving out of the safe cocoons of clan and community. [photo credit: Rick Rocamora]

BEFORE ME was an Islamic religion studies graduate, an aleema who divorced her aleem (Islamic learned man) husband (for beating her up. She was lecturing on significant Muslim women in Islamic history. So far she had taken up the Prophet Muhammad’s wife Khadija and daughter Aisha. Today’s topic: Madina’s Umu Sulaim Rumaisa. All were women of virtue whose lives could give us insights on what a Muslim woman should aspire to.

Every Sunday, a few of us women and girls in the barrio would gather in a small shop of a lady leader to read the Qur’an and listen to aleemas, who would arrive garbed in traditional dress, with only their eyes peering out of their veils. But once they were in front of us, they would shed their facial covering and discuss themes ranging from women heroes to marriage and women’s obligations — basically all things domestic. Through an association of women “seeking faith,” the seminars provided us a place to rest, as well as to bond and learn with other women.

My village at Buadi Sacayo, one of the homes of the old sultanates, has held on to many traditions. It is a close-knit community where residents, especially the young, congregated in the street or during Friday prayers. People here are proud of their roots, a pride they made evident through their colorful homes decorated in the traditional style.

Across this village, at the other end of the highway, is Mindanao State University (MSU), where the more Western-educated reside and teach. While my barrio provides spiritual congregation, it is on the secular, modern campus that I meet a host of other highly educated and “modern” women. Our most recent topic was women’s rights and all the rah-rah of promoting it. The context: cleaning up the elections, especially the ARMM polls in August.

Despite living away from the metropolis for the past year, I find staying in the Islamic city of Marawi refreshing for I see the best of two worlds: those who gave up on the old ways and those who live it. At one end is the sandal-and-backpack crowd, people who live on just the basics and whose ultimate activity is prayer. At the other end are those who push for material success and crave recognition — the professionals, politicians, and yes, NGO workers. One fact ties each extreme to each other: both are made up of Muslims.

I myself feel I am between both worlds. Sometimes, I even feel like an interloper. Having a hijab (veil) on and having non-Muslim friends makes me feel half-Muslim and half-Christian (or mestiza). It is not the religion that makes me feel like I always have to be in the middle of a religious discourse. Instead the feeling arises from the curiosity/half-acceptance I encounter in both Muslim and Christian circles.

When I am with Muslims, I have to defend my “liberal” media profession. When I am with Christians, I have to explain Islam’s practices. But what is being Muslim anyway? Was it all about the . ve pillars, about the sayings of the Prophet and the Qur’an? What of the women, like me — had we rights, could we speak out? And how about pop music, my favorite, was it haram (forbidden)? Was living all about following rules?

These were among the questions I had while growing up, and I have been asking even more questions since. I had been brought up to be conscious of my heritage, to always protect our maratabat, our good name, maratabat to avoid overexposure to the outside world. This was my culture as a Maranao. My religion, at least as taught to me, said almost the same thing-to observe the rituals, to lead a structured life. But I have since realized that religion is actually dynamic and that it was only the elders who had interpreted it otherwise. As postmodernist author Akbar Ahmed says, Islam and balance are compatible, meaning Muslims are not prohibited from embracing principles such as tolerance, democracy, and justice. So could a Muslim have a Christian as a best friend? Can we sing and dance? Could Muslim women wear jeans? And how do we see the Pope and Madonna?

I THINK Muslim communities have yet to confront questions like those I have, and so have yet to bridge a generational gap that has formed. During the National Muslim Youth Summit held at the Asian Institute of Management in 2003, “confusion” was the catchword in the workshop discussions. The speakers were learned elders. The participants, meanwhile, were part of Generation M(uslim). Although they came from different cultural communities, they were all multilingual and educated in some of the top schools around the country and even abroad.

One of the speakers crowed that this was the “new generation of future Muslim leaders” — mobile, techie, and assertive. But some of the participants expressed disappointment at their elders’ lack of sympathy for their “confusion.”

“I don’t wear a veil but no one can question my faith,” said 24-year-old Maguindanaon Nora, a Manila-based nurse. “We are confused because we are curious.” She raised the issue of smuggling by a few Muslim entrepreneurs to which some elders had been willing to turn a blind eye, so long as the proceeds were given as zakat or charity. “Can (smuggling) be made permissible by giving (the proceeds) as zakat?” an incredulous Nora asked.

“Have you read the whole Qur’an?” posed Lucman, offering advice from the elders. “Pray five times and affirm yourself with the graces of Allah.”

All the speakers had advised us to “learn Islam.” Former MSU regent Ansary Alonto also said, “Islam is a system, a way of life.”

But the older yuppies among the participants advised the youngsters to maintain an open mind. Said Aldean Alonto, who had gone to Oxford University on an interfaith event: “Islam is a process, and (acknowledges) an effort to find yourself.”

For me, that process is still ongoing. When I was a child, I thought I would end up as a singer. I had been starstruck as a kid and was a big movie fan; I loved performing as well. Yet being Maranao — and a girl — meant there were many things I could not do. Interest in the arts was discouraged because of its perceived anti-Islamicism. Even today many of us are still unable to deviate from professions chosen for us, like nursing, medicine, engineering, and law. I took up law at the behest of my parents, although my heart wasn’t in it. It was only when I failed major prelaw courses that I allowed myself to follow my desire, which by then was no longer singing, but journalism.

As the eldest of five, I had learned early on to be conscious of the larger group, to sacrifice and put the group’s interests first. Following tradition, we girls had to be very careful in choosing our friends. While my brothers had girlfriends, my sisters and I were chaperoned to avoid “developing” our crushes. We weren’t allowed to date or sleep over at other people’s houses. Contrary to what many outsiders assume, however, we girls — at least those in my family — were made to excel in academics. Mother wanted to be sure that if we were to marry and then were left by our husbands, we could use our education to survive on our own. (Mother’s own father had left their family for another woman.) Father, too, put a premium on education for his children. He was from a clan that placed professionals on pedestals and was himself an inspiration to many of his relatives to acquire an education and land a good job.

Yet for all the restrictions and expectations put upon us, I still managed to have fun in high school. I was lucky because Father was a career diplomat and I was exposed to Western education. Traveling was an eye-opener. I learned to be sensitive and be open to other cultures aside from my own. Practicing my faith had its ups and downs, but I was soon to learn that to know my religion, I had to experience the lack of it.

THAT CAME when I reached college. I suddenly had the freedom to party and socialize. That freedom, however, also brought me one dilemma after another. While my upbringing taught me precaution, the ethos on campus was to live life. While I was boxed in by rules before, I was now being urged to make my own rules.

My response in part was to widen my search for myself. I met atheists who questioned God and all the fundamentals of existence. I attended masses, learned of the Christian faith. I read alternative literature aside from the religious text. Yet as I searched, I had one tangible evidence of my Muslim identity: my hijab, which I began wearing at age 17. I had made the decision to wear one on my own, without any parental prodding, without a mullah lecture, without pressure from my peers. I had read through the Qu’ran and saw in there the rationale for the veil. Rather than being segregationist or purist, the hijab is an acknowledgement that women can work alongside any individual, male or non-Muslim. I do not have to be judged based on my physical appearance, even as my hijab makes me aware that I have to be “good” to earn my keep for the afterlife.

I have since noticed that others wear the veil as a matter of convenience or culture, with the hijab taking on different nuances, depending on the wearer’s community or tribe. Women of the Tausug tribe wear their caps with sequins, those in Maguindanao prefer colored nets, and the Maranao go for the full triangular cover. Others match their veils with eyes heavy with eyeliner. Western Muslim ladies I have met seem more conservative alongside our own; they have no colored veils and there is no strand of hair peeping out of their hijab.

Wearing the veil, of course, is just one symbol, just one of the many experiences, of being a Muslim woman. Yet public discussions regarding Muslim women rarely go beyond our head covering. And in public discussions, we are usually rendered voiceless.

It’s a given that there seems to be a segregation of the sexes, where women are defined and respected for their role in the domestic sphere. Even those who are educated and well-traveled among us find that when they speak outside of that sphere, their voices are not always heard. Sometimes that may be because they are put in “their place.” In Maranao public events, for instance, young women are usually found in the kitchen, in another side of the room separate from the men, and are rarely part of political discussions.

In a way, someone also tried to put me in my place, or at least what he thought that should be, on a business trip I took to Baguio. One bearded religious leader there asked me why I travel without the traditional mahram (a chaperone, because women are discouraged from traveling alone). I told him that if men were doing my media work, I need not do this. I was trying hard not to retort rudely.

BUT THINGS may be starting to change. Just last March, a young women’s forum was held for the first time at MSU to celebrate international women’s month. Many young women and even men came to listen to women speakers and students in veil talk freely about sex-and the lack of knowledge about it. Gender and sex were differentiated. Social stereotyping and assigning of roles was exposed. We even shook our body and exercised to let loose. For once, we were having something besides the traditional seminar/lecture that has become the most acceptable form of public discourse among Muslims.

So there we were, even talking about early and arranged marriages. I felt thankful for my open-minded parents, who consulted us if they were choosing partners for us. In Maranao tradition, the parents do the search for prospective spouses for their children, and arrange the unions among themselves, often without asking the ones who are to be married. Oftentimes the couples are not prepared emotionally and intellectually for the kind of responsibility marriages entail, but that does not seem to matter to the elders.

Someone I know married at 18; she is now 31. She managed to finish college, but has been unable to use her education to have a career of her own. She thought she would be happy taking care of her family, but she lapsed into depression. I think because of an overdose of cultural obedience, she simply forgot all about herself.

Muslim youths today — male and female — aspire to be educated and useful to their communities and beyond. Medical student Naheeda Dimacisil of Laguna expresses her distaste over some Muslim men who still do not see the “equality with women in responsibilities,” which includes seeking knowledge.

A study done by Xavier University found that religion, family, education, and work, were the top priorities of Muslim youths. It further found that young people thought that education is important because it is seen as a vehicle for social mobility, a way to escape poverty, and a means to help others.

Many also want to become among the best in their fields to “dispel the negative image of Islam.” Ateneo de Davao freshman law student Sahara Aliongan says she hopes to become the first Muslim woman to top the bar exams. Then she plans to “write a book and change the negative views of people about Muslims.”

Many Muslims criticize the media for the negative and simplistic portrayal of their communities. For many Filipinos, it would seem “Muslim” has become synonymous with terrorists, criminals, bandits, and the Abu Sayyaf. Many among our countrymen ignore the complexities of tribal differences, the difference between a religion and its followers, and other such nuances.

For us Muslim women, the struggle is twofold: we struggle against the discrimination foisted upon us within our own communities, and we struggle against the Muslim stereotype when we step out of the confines of our family and tribe.

MARAWI CITY Council Jehanne Mutin-Mapupuno says part of the problem is the lack of a Muslim role model. “There are no successful Muslim personalities featured on radio or TV,” she says. “Young Muslims don’t have positive (role) models to identify with or an association of peers they can relate to.”

She’s not really off the mark. After all, the top broadcast news organizations have just begun adding knowledge of Muslim concerns among their criteria for new recruits. And there is still that pressure from elders for youths to pursue non-arts courses.

But while the media have yet to offer a model for Muslims, there are already the likes of women’s rights activist and cancer survivor Yasmin Busran-Lao of Lanao del Sur to show us the way. Busran-Lao is a recognized advocate for reforms in the Shariah legal system, where men have interpreted the laws. She has received the Ninoy Aquino Public Service award, and was featured not only on the Sunday Inquirer but also on CNN. There is also Sulu’s Warina Jukuy, an outspoken spitfire, who filed for candidacy for the gubernatorial post of the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao although she thinks her chances of winning are .00001 percent. So why even try? Her response: just to show the corruption within the system.

Peace advocate Minang Sharief Dirampatan, meanwhile, is a professor and theater artist who has become a fixture at the MSU, which she has called home for the last 25 years. She has also served as mentor and guide to many outstanding MSU youths.

Dirampatan and Busran-Lao were of a generation that segregated Muslim men and women in communities and prioritized men over women when it came to schooling. They broke tradition. They have also nurtured a new generation of thinkers and idealists among Mindanao’s youth. Though Dirampaten at 58 may not be as mobile as before, she mentors others so that the ideas of peace and human rights trickle down to younger, more energetic advocates.

Women like Dirampatan are in my thoughts as I continue my journey. I also think, since most of the world’s conflicts today involve Muslims, it is imperative that Muslim women become promoters of peace even at the village level. They should direct their energies to peacebuilding, which includes conflict resolution, advocacy, and governance. Working for peace can also include teaching the values of peace, promoting interfaith dialogue, and peace journalism and research.

It is work worth devoting one’s life to.

Samira Gutoc, a freelance journalist, is a Sagittarian and one of the founders of Young Moro Professionals. She obtained a fellowship at Oxford University and has represented the Philippines in international conferences on women, youth, and minorities. She is secretary general of the Philippine Muslim Women Council and chairs the National Youth Parliament Alumni Association.

A Muslim woman supervisor at a banana-processing plant in Maguindanao

KABACAN, Cotabato — Last time I was here, in 1997, a body was dumped by the Army in front of the municipal hall, while nearly a dozen truckloads of troops rumbled by. A battle with Moro fighters had flared along the highway, creating smaller skirmishes in the fields and marshes around this town. One of them claimed the life of the man before me, wrapped in a malong awaiting his relatives, his bare farmer’s feet hanging out.

A crowd of usiseros eventually parted for family members, picking up the latest casualty in an unrecorded count. Since Islamic practice mandates Muslim burials within 24 hours of death, it is difficult to verify Muslim fatalities. The Christian dead you could easily find at wakes that lasted days. I had never before then seen a Muslim fatality.

I followed the relatives as they carried the body through the onlookers. I got the name and age of the dead man—Musa Lampukan, 30—but that was nearly all I could find out before the relatives turned away, loaded him onto a jeepney and drove off. Did he have children? Was he also a rebel? Did he have ambitions?

Like other Christian-born reporters covering Mindanao, I always felt I had limited access to Muslim communities. Almost all Muslims I interviewed were either evacuees or rebels. I never got the stories of anyone trying to live normal lives in ordinary Muslim communities, including casualties. But I’d always wondered what a Muslim journalist could have found out about Musa Lampukan. I had long wanted to see Muslim Mindanao as a society, and not just as a “critical area.”

So when I had a chance to direct a documentary on “the other side of war” in Mindanao, I recruited a Muslim cultural guide and on-cam host, the Maranao journalist Samira Ali Gutoc. She called herself a “peace journalist,” covering efforts to restore harmony, as opposed to war reporters who focus on conflict. Samira, just 27, had a been a Philippine Daily Inquirer correspondent based in Marawi City, where she reported on Muslims involved in conducting orderly elections, Christians learning about Islamic practices, and other subjects that had little to do with making war and much to do with building a peaceful, democratic society. She developed a following, especially among Muslim readers, across the country. “There is already so much negative imagery of Muslims in the media,” Samira said. “I just want to counter that.”

That’s how we found ourselves with a camera crew this January in this town’s dusty rural interior, in Barangay Molao, a Maguindanao community controlled by a former MNLF commander. Located near the heart of Mindanao’s fertile rice-growing plains, Molao’s poblacion is a bumpy, hour-long jeepney ride from Kabacan’s town center. Christian settlement in areas along the highway had long pushed Muslim communities toward the outskirts of town like this place, which few government services have ever reached.

With Samira doing most of the talking, we got the cooperation of the commander and his constituents in the town, where we recorded the work of two Maguindanao community organizers, Mona and Ismael, young Muslims who had graduated from Notre Dame University, a Catholic-run institution in Cotabato City that is respected as well by the Muslim community.

Mona had been a Montessori teacher before she decided she wanted to work with communities; Ismael aspired to be a radio broadcaster and would practice by interviewing us, their guests, on his mini-cassette recorder. They were among the Muslims we met on this journey who did not fit the stereotypes of Muslims—the rebels, bandits and victims—that dominate the Manila-based media.

MORE THAN a year after the Philippine military assaults in central Mindanao displaced hundreds of thousands by mid-2000, there have been some efforts at rebuilding Muslim communities. Samira helped us gain access to a few of these areas, so we could document Muslims helping each other. Working with a Mindanao-based NGO, Mona and Ismael were teaching the community how to determine their needs and develop plans to meet them.

Gathering women in a nipa hut for a focus-group discussion, the veiled Mona began by leading the group in Islamic prayer, their hands outstretched, palms facing upward, like my own veiled Roman Catholic mother in church. Then the women discussed, among other things, their coping strategies for times when the men in their communities would be absent for days or weeks at a time.

Many here were evacuees from a neighboring barangay that had become a grassy battleground. They have now resettled in this community where they had fled. I had been told that evacuees often could not return to their original homes even after the end of the violence because new occupants had moved into their land. These were usually people from even more marginalized and war-torn communities who were willing to take the risks of living in another dangerous place.

But here in Barangay Molao, the new settlers came under the wing of Datu Valentino Mantawil, a former commander of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). After many years in Jolo and elsewhere battling government forces, he was semi-retired from fighting following the 1996 peace agreement between the government and the MNLF. Modest and soft-spoken, Datu Mantawil offered the evacuees the use of some of the idle land he had inherited from his father, so his new constituents could grow food. The datu shrugged off the importance of what he was doing. “I’m willing to help anyone, Muslim or Christian,” he said.

There are, however, some returns for this generosity. Our documentary team accompanied an evacuee couple as they paid a visit to the site of their former home, near the boundary with a rival MNLF commander. Datu Mantawil came along for the walk over rolling terrain with three armed escorts, one of them the evacuee husband who had now apparently become part of the datu’s forces.

The couple’s home had been burned down in mid-2000 by Army soldiers after they fled, presumably to prevent it from being used as a hiding place for guerrillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The site was now overgrown with cogon, and a rock was the only evidence of what was once a home.

Along the way, we chatted with other new settlers tending beds of rice seedlings and preparing fields for planting. Aside from land, there was little else in these parts to help people with the hazards of living. “When we were in the evacuation center, we had some health care from the government. Here there are no services,” said Keybutsa Pataru, as he watched his young son Anji fetch dirty drinking water from a shallow well. Three of his other children died of measles and tetanus, both preventable through a government immunization program that had not yet reached his community.

After our chat, he went to his land, on loan from the datu, where he started uprooting bright green rice seedlings from their bed for transferring to a nearby field. Finally, I had reached a “critical area” in Muslim Mindanao and saw what real people did aside from flee or fight a war. They helped each other, focused on growing food, and worried about the future of their children. And sometimes they made peace.

IN A tense town called Buluan in Maguindanao province, where the municipal hall was a burnt-out shell, we took a ride in a narrow, outrigger-less banca down the Buluan River, a main thoroughfare for a number of Muslim communities along the banks. The waterway was also the dividing line between two warring clans that had recently called a truce. At the height of the conflict a few years ago, a foot bridge across the river was destroyed to prevent one side from attacking the other. Since the truce, a single bamboo pole was laid across a portion where the wooden planks of the bridge had been, parallel another bamboo pole for use as a hand rail. To get to the other side, we had to balance ourselves precariously on the pole with all of our equipment, wondering whether the truce was just as perilous as the crossing.

In Mindanao, the political conflicts between the government and various rebel groups hog the headlines. But generally unreported are the many minor wars between fellow Muslims, feuding families that started fighting over a boundary dispute or a crime committed against a member of another family. Courts are either absent or barely functioning in many places in Muslim Mindanao; revenge is the main form of justice.

But sometimes families just get tired of it all, especially the risks for family members who had nothing to do with the dispute except be related by blood to someone directly involved. The peace makers also see the wider benefits of compromise, such as the stability that can lead to economic opportunities. Rido is a well-known word in Mindanao for feud; but much less familiar is the term kanduli, which means festive occasion for making peace, among other reasons. In places wracked by rido, the occasional kanduli can result in radical changes.

For years, tensions between the Mangudadatu clan of Buluan and the Paglas family of the adjoining Datu Paglas municipality threatened to erupt into armed confrontations. In early January, elders from both sides met over a kanduli and agreed to ease the hostility.

“Kinausap namin sila, at nakiusap din sila sa amin na kung pupuwede hintuin na natin ito kasi walang nadadamay kung hindi maliliit na tao (We talked to them, and they also asked us if it were possible to stop feuding because the only ones who got hurt were the innocent and the powerless),” said Totoy Paglas, his town’s two-term mayor. “E kami, nagkikita kami sa labas, parang wala lang sa amin. Pero pag nandito, nagaaway-away kami (We’d see each other outside, and everything would be fine. But once we were here, we’d fight).”

The mayor was driving our team around Datu Paglas as he talked, perhaps the only politician in these parts who drove himself and without any escorts. His municipality, named after his grandfather, had become known outside Mindanao as having remained peaceful even during the height of the government-MILF war of 2000 that raged in the towns around it.

Mayor Paglas didn’t have a complex explanation for the general safety in his town’s streets: constant dialog involving elders, initiating compromise, and livelihood. “Ang talagang nakapagbago sa isip ng mga tao dito nung una yung pagdating ng National Irrigation Administration, noong ma-implement yung irrigation sa amin (What really changed the way people thought here was the coming of the National Irrigation Administration, when irrigation came to our place),” he said. “Nawala na yung gulo-gulo… nakapagtrabaho lahat ng tao (Trouble disappeared…all the people had work).”

Increased livelihood, he explained, lessened criminal activities. The improved peace-and-order situation in turn attracted investors who saw the potential of the region’s rich soil. That created more jobs, so that even former kidnappers are gainfully employed, the mayor said.

The town’s showcase today is La Frutera, a modern banana plantation and processing plant that employs 2,000 men and women, and exports to Saudi Arabia, Japan, and very soon, Iran. One of the fastest growing enterprises in central Mindanao, La Frutera was started by Mayor Paglas’s brother Toto, a former mayor who ran and lost in last year’s election for governor of the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao.

On the day of our visit to the plant, I listened in as Samira interviewed Kulaypa S. Mamangcas, a pregnant Maguindanao woman who is a supervisor in La Frutera. Mamangcas talked about how the plant had changed the lives of women there. “Kakaunti lang ang trabaho na puede sa babae rito sa amin (There was little work available for women here),” she said, as rows of women washed bananas and put them on a conveyor belt enroute to boxes. But now, she said, “nakapunta pa ako sa Japan para pag-aralan ang market namin (I was even able to go to Japan to study our market).”

A happy woman in a supervisory position working in a modern company in a peaceful rural town in Muslim Mindanao—how many stereotypes can be broken in a single sentence? In a land where bad news is the norm, perhaps the occasional story of progress and peace-making is the more significant news. Documented and reported, these kinds of stories might have a better chance of recurring. Alas, the pregnant supervisor’s experience and that of Datu Paglas are still exceptions to the rule.

But they weren’t the only exceptions. We met more than a few along the way—among them, young community organizers who chose a different way to Muslim empowerment, a land owner who shared his land, a mayor who traveled unarmed, and a peace journalist who thought a bridge of reconciliation was just as important a story as the conflict that ended with the laying of a single bamboo pole.