It appears that not only opposition senatorial candidates and progressive party-list groups were the victims of electoral fraud and violence in the ARMM. Even Nur Misuari, founder and leader of the Moro National Liberation Front which is strongest in Sulu, Jolo, and Tawi-Tawi, was victimized, said his supporters.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 18, June 10-16, 2007
It appears that not only opposition senatorial candidates and progressive party-list groups were the victims of electoral fraud and violence in the ARMM. Even Nur Misuari, founder and leader of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) which is strongest in Sulu, Jolo, and Tawi-Tawi, was victimized, said his supporters.
Ustadz Zain Jali, chairman of the Bangsamnoro People’s National Congress (BPNC), confirmed in an interview with Bulatlat the reports that some 2,000 MNLF fighters were unable to vote on May 14.
“We weren’t able to vote,” Jali said. “How can we vote? We are accused of being ‘terrorists,’ we are fighting government (troops). How can we go to the precincts? We would be arrested by soldiers.”
Not only that: based on data from the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC) in Sulu, the thousands of families that were displaced from the towns of Panamao, Kalinggalang Caluang, Panglima Estino, Tongkil and Indanan, amid the wave of fighting between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the MNLF that has been shaking the province since mid-February this year, were still in the evacuation centers when the elections were held. This resulted in a very low voter turnout.
Misuari is known to have many supporters in the towns affected by the fighting and evacuations, other sources from Sulu told Bulatlat.
The MNLF had earlier called for a declaration of a failure of elections in Sulu. In earlier media interviews, Jali lambasted the government for not resolving the Sulu crisis before allowing elections to proceed in the province.
“Farcical and fake” polls
Aside from these, Jali also blames Misuari’s loss on what he described as the “farcical and fake” character of the elections that transpired in Sulu.
“In Sulu, the voting took place even before the voting could begin,” Jali told Bulatlat in an interview. “By the time the voters started arriving at the polling places, there were no more ballots. The ballots were already in the houses of the mayors.”
Jali’s revelation jives with what lawyer Raissa Jajurie, a volunteer for the poll monitoring group Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente) assigned to Sulu, reported in an account recently published in Mindanews.
Jajurie reported seeing, in one school, members of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) writing on ballots which had already been thumbmarked. They were writing the names of the same candidates on each of the ballots, Jajurie said.
In another school in the same town, Jajurie reported seeing people “assisting” the voters as they filled up the ballots.
Jajurie also reported having obtained information that the same thing was being done in other towns in Sulu.
In the end, businessman Abdul Sakur Tan of Lakas-CMD – which is part of the administration coalition Team Unity – emerged as the winner of Sulu’s gubernatorial race.
Aside from Tan, Misuari’s other opponent was former Sulu Gov. Benjamin Loong – who is with the Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino (Kampi), President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s political party.
Based on the final canvass by the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Tan got 84,434 votes, Loong got 53,096 and Misuari got only 19,121.
Sulu is one of the ARMM provinces reported to have delivered a 12-0 victory for Team Unity senatorial candidates Prospero Pichay, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Mike Defensor, Jamalul Kiram, Cesar Montano, Vicente “Tito” Sotto III, Teresa Aquino-Oreta, Ralph Recto, Joker Arroyo, Luis “Chavit” Singson, Edgardo Angara, and Vicente Magsaysay.
The said province has a total of 251,223 voters, based on data from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) regional office in the ARMM. This number is statistically enough to affect the 11th and 12th slots in the senatorial race.
Sporadic fighting
Sulu has been sporadically shaken by fighting between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the MNLF since 2001.
Sulu, the Philippines’ southernmost province, is one of the four original provinces covered by the ARMM; the others are Basilan, Maguindanao, and Tawi-Tawi. The province of Shariff Kabunsuan was later carved out of Maguindanao, while Lanao del Sur and the Islamic City of Marawi were added to the region’s coverage.
The ARMM is a product of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement between the GRP and the MNLF.
The MNLF traces its origins to a massacre of between 28 to 64 Moro fighters recruited by the government in 1968 for a scheme to occupy Sabah, an island near Mindanao to which the Philippines has a historic claim.
Sabah ended up in the hands of the Malaysian government during the presidency of Diosdado Macapagal (1961-1965). His successor Ferdinand Marcos conceived a scheme involving the recruitment of Moro fighters to occupy the island.
The recruits were summarily executed by their military superiors in 1968, in what is now known as the infamous Jabidah Massacre.
The Jabidah Massacre triggered widespread outrage among the Moros and led to the formation of the MNLF that same year. The MNLF waged an armed revolutionary struggle against the GRP for an independent Muslim state in Mindanao.
The Marcos government, weighed down by the costs of the Mindanao war, negotiated for peace and signed an agreement with the MNLF in Tripoli, Libya in the mid-1970s. The pact involved the grant of autonomy to Mindanao Muslims.
The Marcos government insisted on a plebiscite to settle the coverage of the autonomous government that would be established. The MNLF refused to recognize the results of the plebiscite and peace negotiations bogged down.
GRP-MNLF peace negotiations went on and off until 1996, when the two parties signed a Final Peace Agreement.
In October 2001, hostilities broke out anew between the GRP and the MNLF. The military was in hot pursuit of Abu Sayyaf bandits who had abducted tourists in Sipadan, Malaysia. At one point, the military had announced the defeat of an “Abu Sayyaf” contingent in Talipao, Sulu.
The MNLF, however, said that it was its guerrillas, not Abu Sayyaf bandits, who were killed by the military.
The massacre in Talipao led the MNLF, just five years after signing a peace agreement with the government, to once more take up arms. Misuari, a former political science professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) who was then ARMM governor, said the Talipao Massacre was a “violation” of the 1996 Peace Agreement.
Misuari, who was then in Malaysia, ended up being arrested and subsequently detained in a military camp in Sta. Rosa, Laguna (38 kms south of Manila) and charged with rebellion. He is currently under house arrest in New Manila, Quezon City while still facing rebellion charges.
The waves of fighting have invariably been provoked by massacres of Moro civilians by soldiers, Jali said.
Tripartite meeting and massacres
Sulu made headlines earlier this year, when MNLF fighters led by Ustadz Habier Malik “detained” a group led by Muslim convert Marine Maj. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino in Jolo, Sulu.
Dolorfino, who also uses the name Ben Muhammad, went with Undersecretary for Peace Ramon Santos and 13 others to the MNLF’s Camp Jabal Ubod in Panamao, Sulu in the morning of Feb. 2 to talk with MNLF representatives headed by Malik. The group included two colonels, a junior officer, nine enlisted men, and several members of Santos’ staff.
The talks were to tackle the holding of a tripartite meeting, proposed late last year by the MNLF, with the GRP and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). The tripartite meeting was to address issues related to the implementation of the Final Peace Agreement, and Malik’s group was protesting its repeated postponement by the GRP.
In the afternoon of that same day, Dolorfino and his group were prevented from leaving the camp, and were only released after agreeing with Malik and his men on a schedule for the tripartite meeting.
The tripartite meeting scheduled for March 17 this year was yet again postponed, and to make matters worse two grandsons of MNLF state chairman Khaid Ajibon were fired upon by soldiers while on an errand in the market of Indanan, Sulu on Feb. 17. This was followed by a bombardment of Ajibon’s headquarters, also in Indanan, and a massacre in Patikul.
The MNLF retaliated and in the renewed wave of fighting, more than 80,000 have been displaced.
Polls and peace
Asked what the next moves of Misuari and the MNLF would be, Jali said they would continue the campaign for Misuari’s release. “That is the priority of the MNLF and the Bangsamoro people,” he told Bulatlat.
The demand for Misuari’s release is among the issues that will be taken up in the tripartite meeting with the GRP and the MNLF, which Jali said had been scheduled on the second week of July. Bulatlat