DEMOCRACY AT GUNPOINT Election-Related V PDF

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 1
Democracy
at Gunpoint
Election-Related
Violence in the
Philippines
Democracy
at Gunpoint
Election-Related
Violence in the
Philippines
Carolyn O. Arguillas
Artha Kira Paredes
Ryan Rosauro
Ven Labro
Reyan Arinto
Jules L. Benitez
Antonio Manaytay
Carlos Marquez Jr.
Writers
Avigail M. Olarte
Researcher
Yvonne T. Chua and Luz D. Rimban

Editors
DEMOCRACY AT GUNPOINT
Election-Related Violence in the Philippines
Edited by Yvonne T. Chua and Luz D. Rimban
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ISBN 978-971-92445-6-1
Cover and book design: Eduardo A. Davad
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Asia Foundation.
Contents
FOREWORD [By Steven Rood].............................. vi
OVERVIEW............................................................. x
Breaking the cycle of election violence
MAGUINDANAO.................................................. 1
The long shadow of the Ampatuans
ABRA...................................................................... 31
Bloody struggle for control of public funds
LANAO DEL SUR................................................... 56

Violence in ‘dagdag-bawas’ country
EASTERN VISAYAS................................................. 78
No stopping ‘guns, goons and gold’
SULU....................................................................... 100
Balance of terror
TAWI-TAWI............................................................ 120
A Tausug dynasty in the land of the Sama
BASILAN................................................................ 138
Ballot ‘stained with blood’
NUEVA ECIJA......................................................... 152

‘Wild, wild west’ no more?
MASBATE............................................................... 172
‘Lifelines’ for political survival
Foreword
Overview
Breaking the cycle

of election violence
By Luz Rimban
T
he Ampatuan Massacre in Maguindanao on
November 23, 2009 drew worldwide attention to the
problem of warlordism in the Philippines and raised
urgent concerns about the possible escalation of
election-related violence in the May 10, 2010 elections.
The main suspect, Andal Ampatuan Jr., was planning to run for
governor unopposed. He had hoped to follow in the footsteps of his
father, Governor Andal Ampatuan Sr., his brother, Vice Governor
Sajid Ampatuan, and Maguindanao’s provincial board members,
all of whom ran unopposed in the previous elections. Andal Jr.
apparently did not want to break the budding tradition of giving
the field to a lone candidate, preferably surnamed Ampatuan, his
father started.
The result was a carnage, the worst election-related violent
incident the country, and the world, has seen: 58 dead, including
the wife and sister of Andal Jr.’s would-be opponent, Esmael
Mangudadatu, 32 media persons and several innocent motorists
who happened to be at the wrong place at just the wrong time.
Violence on such a scale leading to, during or after elections
has not been confined to Maguindanao under the Ampatuans.
x democracy at gunpoint
Mindanao journalists like to say they’ve seen it before, elsewhere
and more frequently than most people care to know. It just
happened, they say, that the Ampatuan victims were killed in one go
and included media persons, hence the national and international
outcry.
This book examines election-related violence in Maguindanao
as well as other areas that have traditionally been labeled “election
hotspots.” As the chapters in this book show, the Ampatuans have
counterparts in other provinces, towns and cities—some on the rise,
others on the decline, some very much entrenched, others unseated.
These political families employ violence routinely to stay in
power, eliminate opponents, grab land, conduct illegal activity and
generally instill fear in the population. Most may have just been
more discreet, or their localities are far from media scrutiny. At any
rate, as a result of the uproar over the Ampatuan Massacre, public
awareness and vigilance against election-related violence grew, and
warlords were forced to lie low and tuck their guns away.
But the violence does not only come from warlord families
with guns and goons at their disposal. Most election hotspots are
considered “hotspots” because clans are at war or because armed
groups—communist insurgents, Moro rebels or bandits—operate,
justifying gun ownership and a stronger armed presence on the part
of the government.
This book looks at election-related violence at a crucial time in
Philippine politics. In 2010, the country went through an automated
voting and canvassing exercise in synchronized national and local
elections for the first time. The automation was supposed to reduce
opportunities and motives for violence, but as the chapters in this
book show, the violence seems to have adjusted to the new political
processes.

Assessing the 2010 polls
T
he Ampatuan Massacre prompted the national
government to create the Independent Commission Against
Private Armies, with retired Court of Appeals Associate
Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xi

Justice Monina Zenarosa as chairperson.
In its final report written just before the elections, the Zenarosa
Commission noted with alarm that despite an amnesty on loose
firearms, the use of guns continued to be widespread. Because of
this, it said, “It can be reasonably expected that the number of
election-related violence will escalate in the coming weeks.”
If indeed the number of election-related violent incidents did
increase, the police said the total was still less than the past two
elections. Task Force Hope (Honest, Orderly, Peaceful Elections) of
the Philippine National Police (PNP) counted only 180 election-
related violent incidents (ERVIs) during the whole five-month
election period. The figure is the lowest, ranked alongside the two
previous elections when ERVIs counted more than 200.
In its report, Task Force Hope also noted that there were only
155 casualties in 2010—just half the number recorded in 2007 and
a third of those in 2004. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)
has a lower figure for 2004 compared to the PNP.
On May 10 itself, both the PNP and the AFP declared that
the country experienced “the most peaceful electoral exercise” in
its history.
A monitoring of ERVIs conducted
Election-related by Vote Peace, a project of the
violence incidents, nongovernment election watchdog
2004 to 2010 Consortium for Electoral Reform,
Year Incidents Casualties
yielded practically the same count
2004 249 468
as the PNP’s.
2007 229 297
But Vote Peace began monitoring
2010 180 155 ERVIs in January 2009, which
Source: PNP commenced the yearlong pre-
election period when candidates
began serious preparations to run for office, and counted 195
incidents. Vote Peace said it was the lowest in 12 years.
In Luzon, Vote Peace reported the most number of ERVIs coming
from the Bicol Region, mostly concentrated in Masbate, where
elections have always been characterized by killings. In the Visayas,
the province with the most number of incidents was Iloilo. In
xii democracy at gunpoint

What happened on Mindanao, Maguindanao registered
election day? the most number of violent incidents,
followed by Lanao del Sur.
Type of No. of Filipinos living in traditional
incidents incidents hotspots like Abra and provinces in
Shooting 6 the Autonomous Region in Muslim
Explosion 17 Mindanao, however, may not all agree
Harassment 8 with the assessment that the 2010
Destruction of elections were the most peaceful,
4
PCOS machines or that the ERVIs were the lowest in
Ambush 2 years.
Ballot snatching 2 For one, there has always been a
Encounter 5 problem defining what is and what
Source: PNP is not an ERVI. And then there is
(Note: 32 incidents in ARMM alone) also the reality that many incidents
have been excluded from the count,
either by people who are afraid to
report them or have been paid off, or by police and military officials
themselves for various reasons.
For these reasons, the statistics do not really tell the whole story.
Problematic time frame
O
ne problem with counting and classifying ERVIs is the
time frame used. Officially, the PNP and the AFP classify
as ERVI only those politically motivated violent acts that
fall within the election period, which is 120 days before election day
and 30 days after.
In its study of election violence in Nueva Ecija, entitled “Remnants
of the Past in a Changing Terrain of Politics: Explaining Election-
Related Violence in Nueva Ecija, Philippines,” the Ateneo School of
Government notes the problem using such a time frame.
“Since the definition is time-bound, it rules out other violence that
may be related to the elections happening outside the given period,”
the study said. The five-month period does not consider the fact
that candidates and political parties start preparing for election
Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xiii

years before they run.
Using this definition, the Ampatuan Massacre does not appear
in official statistics as an ERVI even if the motives were clearly
election-related. Neither is the bombing of an election registration
center in Marawi City in October 2009 in which one person was
killed and 20 others wounded, all of them lining up for voter
enlistment.
The PNP’s list of ERVIs omits the strafing of a kindergarten
graduation on March 23 by 50 armed men, among them Cromwell
Luna, the mayoral candidate of Tineg town in Abra. Eighty members
of the community signed a handwritten affidavit narrating the
incident, but it was not acted upon.
Also not counted as an ERVI was the kidnapping of 22-year-old
Nuraldin Yusoph, son of Elections Commissioner Elias Yusoph, six
weeks after elections, even if the military commander in the area
as well as Moro rebels blamed it on losing candidates reportedly
wanting to get back at the father.
When it took into account the pre-election period, Vote Peace
listed a casualty count of 221 for the 2010 elections, which it said
was the highest since the 1998 elections. The figure includes the
Marawi City bombing and the Ampatuan Massacre. and the Yusoph
kidnapping.
Motives, victims, perpetrators
I
n monitoring ERVIs, the police, military and watchdog
groups also take into account the motives, usually based on who
the perpetrators and victims are. Here again, the statistics may
not present the whole picture.
The Ateneo study notes that the PNP identifies “actors” usually
listed as perpetrators: partisan armed groups beholden to politicians,
communist rebels or Muslim secessionists. Usually prone to become
victims are politicians, their supporters, government officials,
uniformed personnel and civilians.
“The definition and/or treatment of election-related violence in
terms of victims and perpetrators do not encompass all the possible
xiv democracy at gunpoint

configurations of actors,” the study said. “This actor-specific
treatment of election-related violence does not take into account
reports on state-led repression of rights to suffrage of some partisan
groups.”
This definition raises problems when the politician is the
perpatrator and not the victim. One example is the case of former
Bangued Mayor Dominic Valera, whom witnesses reportedly saw
shooting a supporter of rival Ryan Luna one evening in April 2010.
The killing was listed as an ERVI in the provincial police’s records
but is not on the final report released June 16, 2010.
In Sulu also in April, one mayor responded to an armed conflict
among supporters of rival candidates by shelling them with mortar
fire. This incident was never reported and does not appear as an
ERVI.
One of the Zenarosa Commission’s findings was that in some
areas, active duty poliemen, soldiers and paramilitary personnel
comprise the private armies of politicians, and have been responsible
for election-related deaths and harassments. In the Ampatuan
Massacre, among those charged were active-duty policemen.
The commission zeroed in on specific areas where politicians
employ members of the Citizen Armed Force Geographical Unit
(CAFGU) as personal bodyguards and private armies.
In Abra, the commission’s findings paralleled what Artha Kira
Paredes wrote in her chapter on ERVIs in the province. Quoting
Col. Leouel Santos, the CAFGU battalion commander in Abra, the
commission said, “Before applicants are chosen for CAFGU training,
the local chief executive’s endorsement and recommendation
should be sought. However, these applicants are usually former
employees of the local chief executives, whose loyalties remain with
their former employer.”
The commission also found that in Abra, “40 former bodyguards
and employees of the mayor allegedly became members of the
CAFGU assigned to patrol the municipality. When they are not on
duty as CAFGU members, they are employed by the mayor. “
The problem has been reported elsewhere in the Cordilleras,
where “some erring CAFGU members supposedly could not be
Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xv

sanctioned or removed from the CAFGU because they are either
relatives or supporters of the mayor or governor, and/or their
removal is restrained by higher ranking AFP officials.”

Private armed groups
T
he Ampatuan Massacre trained the spotlight on private
armies, also called private armed groups or partisan armed
groups (PAGs), with the Zenarosa Commission visiting
election hotspots to verify reports on the existence of these PAGs.
The commission adopted this definition of a private army: “An
organized group of two or more persons with legally or illegally
issued or illegally possessed firearms, utilized for purposes of sowing
fear and intimidation for the advancement and protection of vested
economic and/or political interests.”
If this definition were to be used, informants told the
commission, “then all politicians have private armies.”
Nearly two decades ago, in July 1993, former President Fidel
Ramos, in his Letter of Instruction 15/93 creating “Oplan
Paglalansag” and ordering the PNP to dismantle private armies,
defined them as:
“…groups of three (3) or more armed men who may not be

physically together but in a moment’s notice, can be summoned
by a leader, such as a politician, businessman, wealthy individuals,
and other influential persons in a certain area, for ostensibly legal
or illegal purpose, such as for the security of persons, installations,
and properties.”
Oplan Paglalansag also distinguished private armies from rebel

groups which are founded on ideology. The letter of instruction
also said private armies are not “vested with legal character
like government forces and neither do they have any juridical
personality. They can also moonlight as members of the PNP and
other enforcement agencies.”
By September 1993, the PNP reported dismantling 283 out of
xvi democracy at gunpoint

Private armed Private armed groups,
groups, by region selected provinces
(as of April 2010) (as of April 2010)
Region PAGs No. of
Province No. of PAGs members
1 12
Abra 4 77
2 6
Nueva Ecija 3 24
COR 4
Masbate 11 120
3 7
Samar 3 97
4A 9
Eastern Samar 2 29
4B 4
Leyte 1 15
5 15
Basilan 4 700*
6 8
Lanao del Sur 1 100*
7 2
Maguindanao 3 1,596
8 6
Sulu 7 380
9 4
Tawi-Tawi 5 140*
10 8
12 1 *more or less
13 1
Note: figures include both “engaged PAGs” (groups whose
ARMM 20 members have been arrested and arms confiscated) and
“active PAGs” (groups being monitored, suspected to have
Total 107 engaged or currently engaged in illegal activities)
Source: PNP Source: Zenarosa Commission
558 private armed groups. Since then, the government has launched
repeated efforts to rid the country of private armies.
Based on PNP statistics, the Zenarosa Commission reported
that as of April 2010, there were in existence 107 private armies
across the country, with the biggest number in the ARMM (20),
followed by the Bicol Region (15) and then by Region 1 (12).
The PNP also reported arresting 76 members and confiscating
85 firearms, with 38 licensed firearms surrendered.
Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xvii

PAGs and political dynasties
T
he Ateneo School of Government, in its studies on
the response to poll violence in Samar, Masbate, Basilan,
Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Nueva Ecija and Abra, said
private armed groups have always existed alongside political clans.
It found that political competition, more than the monopoly of a
single powerful clan, now characterizes power play in every hotspot.
“The emergence of private armies in the country’s political
scene is a phenomenon that traces its origin in the grim reality
of the politicians’ struggle for dominance in their respective
jurisdictions, exacerbated by a national affection for guns,” the
Zenarosa Commission concluded. “Without the politicians who
nurture them, no private armies could ever exist.”
Among political families notorious for reportedly maintaining
private armies are the Josons of Nueva Ecija, the Valeras of Abra, the
Espinosas and Khos in Masbate and the Akbars of Basilan.
In recent years, however, some of the old clans have fallen out
of power, while new ones have emerged. In Nueva Ecija, the Josons
were said to have lost control of the province after a defeat in the
gubernatorial race in 2007, which partly explains the decreased
incidence of election violence there.
But the new clans follow the same pattern of having members
serve in various local positions at the same time, increasing their
clout and reach, both nationally and locally.
An example of those on the rise or staying in power are the
Lunas in Abra and the Sahalis of Tawi-Tawi. In the smaller towns of
faraway provinces such as Tawi-tawi, husband-and-wife or mother-
and-son tandems or siblings have won election as mayor and vice
mayor or vice versa.
The Zenarosa Commission raised the alarm about one such family
in Mindanao: that of former Zamboanga del Norte congressman and
convicted rapist Romeo Jalosjos. His brother and two sons won election
as members of Congress, another son is governor of Zamboanga
Sibugay, and still another is mayor of Dapitan City.
xviii democracy at gunpoint

The commission said the Jalosjoses formed an armed group
purportedly as an anti-drug unit. The group, called Task Force
Lupad, consisted of people with criminal records and “purportedly
being tolerated” by the provincial police chief. Task Force Lupad is
“publicly viewed as the Jalosjos clan’s private army,” and is blamed
for killings and harassment in the province, the commission said.

Factors contributing to ERV
O
ther factors aggravate election violence. In Mindanao,
one such factor is the tradition of rido or clan wars, in
which feuding families get back at each other through
violence for wrongs committed against them. Warring families
often ally with warlords or armed groups for support and protection.
The Zenarosa Commission said, “There is no doubt that rido
contributes to the proliferation of firearms, as families accumulate
arms to protect themselves and secure their families from the
opposing clan.”
And then there are the communist insurgency and Moro
rebellion. In Nueva Ecija, a stronghold of the Communist Party of
the Philippines and the New People’s Army, communist insurgents
took part in the elections as well.
“There have been documented incidences where the insurgents
are said to be intensifying their Permit to Campaign and Permit to
Win in some towns and municipalities in Nueva Ecija,” said the
Ateneo School of Government.
Clashes between the military and communist insurgents as well
as military repression against “above-ground” groups perceived to
support the rebels happen during election time.
Similarly, elements of the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) or the Abu Sayyaf roam about in Basilan, often
engaging the military in armed encounters. The Abu Sayyaf has
continued kidnapping activities, often targeting teachers and
ordinary citizens. Fear of both the Abu Sayyaf and the MILF have
kept Boards of Election Inspectors away from polling precincts in
Basilan towns, disrupting the voting process.
Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xix

Responses to ERV
I
n the 2010 elections, civil society groups stepped into the picture
by getting politicians in some parts of the country to commit to
peaceful and orderly elections. In some areas, the peace initiatives
were initiated by nongovernment groups, in others by the Joint
Security Control Center created in some problem areas. The JSCC was
composed of the AFP, PNP and the Commission on Elections.
Vote Peace was among those groups that initiated peace initiatives,
conducting various activities intended to lead to the signing of a peace
covenant among candidates. It worked with local groups such as the
Abra Multi-Sectoral Group, Masbate Advocates for Peace, Mindoro
Movement for Good Governance, Maguindanaoans for Peace and De-
velopment Forum, Northern Samar Peace and Development Forum,
and the United Front for HOPE in Western Mindanao.
Vote Peace also held “peace activities” that ranged from forums
and assemblies, to dialogues with candidates.
These “peace” efforts were, however, immediate, short-term
responses intended to send the signal to politicians and private
armies that civil society was watching them during the elections.
The challenge is the long-term solution.
The Zenarosa Commission recommended the aggressive
implementation of laws and orders such as those on gun control.
Government would have to start with itself on this point since
among the firearms with unrenewed licenses, also considered loose
firearms, recovered by the PNP
Loose firearms were 30,000 government-owned
in the Philippines firearms in the possession of 34
Expired licenses 559,326 government agencies. At the end
of the amnesty, the licenses of
General population 529,550
these firearms were renewed.
Threat gropus 15,676
The commission also
Criminal elements 5,820
proposed the full implementa-
Total 1,110,277
tion of the administrative order
Registered firearms 1,250,000 disbanding private armies, as
Source: PNP
xx democracy at gunpoint
Loose firearms well as the strict monitoring of paramili-
distribution tary forces such as the CAFGU.
Another recommendation is
Region Number the review of the local government code
1 26,928 provisions on internal revenue allotments
2 32,168 (IRA). After all, the IRA is what politicians
3 78,166 fight tooth and nail for—the allocation
4A 101,758 from the national budget given by the
4B 8,779 government to a town, city or province.
5 28,587 Local executives often do as they
6 52,759 please with the allotments, which usually
7 52,727 go to their own pockets. The law states
8 43,409 that 20 percent of the IRA should be
9 45,969
spent on development projects, but local
officials do not always comply with this.
10 42,229
This is why in places like Maguindanao,
11 49,178
there is hardly any sign of development,
12 62,719
while the warlords like the Ampatuans
13 43,957
build lavish mansions and accumulate
ARMM 114,189
extensive arsenals.
COR 11,628
Alongside this recommendation,
NCR 315,127 the Zenarosa Commission also recom-
Total 1,110,277 mended that the central office of the
Source: PNP Commission on Audit send out special
audit teams to hotspots, complete with
security detail to ensure they do their job.
This is easier ordered than done, since it is common knowledge that
auditors have no choice but to turn a blind eye to the financial ex-
cesses of warlord politicians.
Another important recommendation is the passage of a law
prohibiting political dynasties. This law was first proposed at least
two decades ago, when Filipinos were just recovering from the rule
of former president Ferdinand Marcos. The law is unlikely to get
past the watchful eyes of the members of a new breed of political
dynasties, now well-positioned and reinforced to ensure that their
kind enjoy power for generations to come.
Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xxi

xxii democracy at gunpoint
Bodies are retrieved at the site of the “Ampatuan Massacre” of November
23, 2009. Photo by Rommel Rebollido
Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xxiii
MAGUINDANAO
The long shadow of
the Ampatuans
By Carolyn O. Arguillas
N
early half a year into their three-year
term, Maguindanao Governor Esmael “Toto”
Mangudadatu and his vice governor, Ismael
“Dustin” Veloso Mastura, were still holding
office apart: Mangudadatu in his hometown
Buluan in the southeastern edge of the province; Mastura in his
hometown Sultan Kudarat 140 kilometers northwest.
The unusual office arrangement is not for lack of a provincial
capitol. In fact, Maguindanao has one of the most luxurious capitols
in the country: a three-story palatial structure in the town of Shariff
Aguak painted peach and pink, with a bed and a Jacuzzi whirlpool
bath in the rooms adjoining the governor’s office.
But Mangudadatu and Mastura had ruled out moving into
this large and lavish workplace partly for security considerations.
Carolyn O. Arguillas is editor in chief of MindaNews, the news service arm of a

cooperative of Mindanao-based journalists.

MAGUINDANAO: The long shadow of the Ampatuans
For one, it was the brainchild of former three-term governor Andal

Ampatuan Sr., who arbitrarily decided to build a new capitol in
the town of Shariff Aguak, where it stands a mere 400 meters
away from his mansion. Ampatuan’s palace, in turn, is just across
the street from that of his son, Zaldy, who was reelected governor
of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in
2008.
Shariff Aguak, formerly known as Maganoy, is at the heart of
the Maguindanao’s second congressional district, which is made
up of towns controlled by the Ampatuans. The capitol’s location
puts it in the belly of the beast, the beast in this case being the
Ampatuans’ armed force. According to the group Human Rights
Watch (HRW) in a report released in 2010, the Ampatuans’
private army counted as many as 5,000 men composed of civilian
volunteers and militiamen as well as active duty policemen and
soldiers.
Scores of these armed men have been charged with the carnage
on November 23, 2009 that is now known as the “Ampatuan
Massacre,” in which Mangudadatu’s wife and other relatives,
as well as 32 media persons, were brutally murdered. It is the
worst case of election-related violence the country has seen, and
catapulted Maguindanao, once the seat of Moro secession, back
into the national consciousness.
Maguindanao
clans and politics
T
he province Filipinos know today as Maguindanao was
once part of the Cotabato Empire, one of the largest and
richest provinces in the country. The empire was then
composed of what are now the cities of Cotabato, Kidapawan,
General Santos, Tacurong and Koronadal, and the provinces of
Sarangani, South Cotabato, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and
Maguindanao. Until 1955, governorship of special provinces was
appointive, and the Moro politicians close to Malacanang were
favored.
2 democracy at gunpoint
In 1966, Cotabato went the way of other provinces and was
divided into South Cotabato and Cotabato. Less than a decade
later in 1973, Cotabato was further divided into three provinces:
Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and North Cotabato.
The reason behind the split was political: At the time, the
influx of settlers from Luzon and the Visayas into Mindanao
had altered the social and demographic balance, particularly in
the Cotabato Empire. Also, the Moro liberation movement was
getting stronger, and allies of then President Ferdinand Marcos,
the traditional Moro politicians who were starting to lose their
clout over local politics, were threatened by the possibility that
a non-Moro would govern the province, like in South Cotabato.
As a “win-win” solution, Marcos issued in November 1973
Presidential Decree 341 creating the three provinces.
Marcos also designated the capital of each provine: Kidapawan
for North Cotabato, Isulan for Sultan Kudarat, and the town
of Maganoy, where Ampatuan started his political career, for
Maguindanao.
Maguindanao is home to one of the country’s longest
serving politicians. Simeon Ampatuan Datumanong, a nephew
of Ampatuan, first entered politics in 1963 as board member of
what was then the Cotabato Empire. He became vice governor in
1967 and then governor of the province of Cotabato from 1968 to
1971, after the empire was broken up into two. Datumanong was
also appointed by Marcos as the first governor of Maguindanao,
from 1973 to 1975, and held
various elective and appointive government posts through
the terms of six presidents, from Marcos to Benigno Aquino III.
Datumanong is said to have established considerable influence
within the province and with national officials.
Another prominent political family in Maguindanao was
the Matalam clan. Udtog Matalam was the first governor of
the Cotabato Empire, and was also one of the founders of the
Mindanao Independence Movement that launched a rebellion
against the national government that inspired the Moro National
Liberation Front (MNLF).

Matalam became like a second father to MNLF chairman

Nur Misuari. “It was the great, great old Matalam that inspired
Professor Misuari to continue the struggle of the Bangsamoro in
Mindanao,” said Councilor Zandra Matalam Adil of Pagalungan
town.
Udtog Matalam was married to Bai Tinomimbang Pendatun,
daughter of the former senator and Liberal Party stalwart Salipada
Pendatun. The latter won a seat in the first Senate in 1946. Datu
Matalam’s son, Guimid, served two terms as representative of the
second district of Maguindanao. He was ARMM vice governor to
then governor Misuari, and aspired to the ARMM’s top post in
2001 but lost to Parouk Hussin. In 2004 he ran for governor of
Maguindanao but lost to reelectionist Ampatuan. He ran again for
ARMM governor in 2005 and 2008 but lost to Zaldy Ampatuan.
Other clans that had influence in Maguindanao included
the Pendatun, Sinsuat, Piang, Mastura, Midtimbang and Paglas
families.
In the 1990s, Maguindanao served as the main base of the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which was led by the late
Muslim scholar Salamat Hashim of Pagalungan town. Salamat
was an Egypt-educated intellectual who used to be vice chairman
of the MNLF, until differences with Misuari forced him and his
followers to break away into the “New MNLF” in the late 1970s,
following the collapse of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement. The “New
MNLF” was renamed Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the early
1980s because people were getting confused, said Hashim in a
2000 interview.
By the 1990s, the MNLF was on the wane (it also signed
a supposed “Final” Peace Agreement with the Philippine
government on September 2, 1996), but the MILF was gaining
ground and making itself felt through a series of attacks on
military detachments and foreign-funded projects in and around
Maguindanao.
At the time, the MILF was operating from out of Camp
Abubakar, a 10,000-hectare area which served as its training
ground and headquarters. The camp straddled four Maguindanao
towns—Matanog, Barira, Buldon and Parang—that were among
the poorest in the country and a source of recruits and mass
support for the Moro army.

The rise of Andal Ampatuan Sr.
T
he Ampatuan patriarch, Andal Ampatuan Sr., was
familiar with Maguindanao’s volatile political and military
environment. In the 1970s, during the martial law years
when the government was fighting the MNLF, Ampatuan was
a militiaman who eventually became the commander of a
paramilitary unit. He subsequently gained enough clout and
financial resources to mount a run for political office, starting
out as vice mayor and then rising to become mayor of Maganoy
town, which he renamed Shariff Aguak, and eventually becoming
governor for three terms.
In January 1988, during the first local elections after the
ouster of Marcos following the People Power Revolution,
Ampatuan ran for reelection and won. But violence tainted his
victory. The HRW report cites the killing on December 30, 1987
of the campaign manager of his rival, Surab Abutazil, who was
himself shot dead in January 1990, supposedly for questioning
Ampatuan’s election.
Ampatuan then proceeded to accumulate and consolidate
his family’s economic power, mainly through the forcible and
violent acquisition of land, the HRW said. In 2001, with enough
resources, a solid political network behind him and the backing
of the military, Ampatuan set his political sights beyond Maganoy
and decided to run for governor of Maguindanao. He challenged
and defeated Zacaria Candao, then governor of Maguindanao
and former governor of the ARMM.
Candao was legal counsel of the MNLF during the peace
negotiations that led to the signing of the Tripoli Agreement 1976,
and later the MILF which is dominated by Maguindanaons.
Like Abutazil before him, Candao accused Ampatuan of using
force and fraud, which Ampatuan answered with violence. “Prior

to and following the election, the Ampatuans were allegedly

responsible for killing and abducting several Candao family
members and supporters,” the HRW report said.
In the 2004 elections, Guimid Matalam went up against
Ampatuan and lost. In a petition before the Commission on
Elections (Comelec), Matalam sought a declaration of failure
of elections in 25 of the province’s 27 towns because of alleged
electoral fraud. He said the fraud included having election returns
prepared even before voting began at 7 a.m. on May 10, 2004 and
ballot boxes never being brought to precincts.
The Comelec also looked into reports that at least 37,000
Maguindanao residents committed the election offense of double
registration.
Matalam’s petition was specific in its charges. It said multiple
voting took place after the Comelec approved the clustering of
precincts in the weeks before election day, when the precincts
were again unclustered, causing extra precincts. As a result, voters’
lists contained the same names in different precincts. Despite the
unclustering, the excess precincts were issued election returns
and certificate of canvass at the municipal level. After election
day, the unclustered precincts were reclustered and the election
returns combined and certified by election officers.
Nothing came of the protest. By then, Ampatuan had
ingratiated himself with the national government by taking a firm
stand against the MILF. Ampatuan had an army of paramilitary
elements, including civilian volunteer organizations (CVOs),
which are not supposed to be armed. Under Ampatuan, however,
they were.
Something about Ampatuan should have rung alarm bells,
officials said. Unlike other Muslim leaders who rose to national
prominence as lawyers or scholars, Ampatuan did not even
complete his elementary education.
“I don’t have any intention to discriminate (against some)
people, but if you give too much political power to somebody
who is not well educated and who is not very aware of the law,
how can you enforce the law in this area? What do you expect
from an elementary undergraduate who does not understand the
law and you give him the power to enforce the law? So his way
of enforcing the law becomes warlordism style. His leadership
becomes warlord leadership,” Lt. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer, who
headed the Maguindanao-based 6th Infantry Division from
March 2007 to January 2009, said in a January 2010 interview.
Ferrer, who became chief of the Eastern Mindanao Command
(EastMinCom) in 2009 and was named chief of the Western
Mindanao Command on November 19, 2010, added, “I think
they don’t even feel that they are not doing the right thing
because they have a different value system. They do not really
think the way we think like what is the standard of governance.
They think that when you’re governor, you rule your place. So
that is warlordism. I am the governor, I am not a public servant.
I am the ruler of my place. Datuism, warlordism come into play
because he is not well educated to understand what is good
governance and good leadership.”

The arming of the Ampatuans
F
errer said Ampatuan armed his men on the pretext
they were on the side of the government fighting the MILF.
“He became a natural ally,” the general said.
Eventually, the Ampatuans gained a sense of entitlement,
especially when the national government started giving in to
their demand for the creation of Special Citizens Armed Auxiliary
(SCAA) units, and later the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical
Units (CAFGUs). CAFGUs are the present-day version of the
Civilian Home Defense Units, paramilitary groups formed in
the 1970s by Marcos; they are territorial and are supposed to be
confined within their barangays.
“And then when he (Ampatuan) thought of organizing
civilian volunteer organizations (CVOs), they gave him arms
because he is a natural ally. So nothing (is) wrong with that. But
the problem is, I believe, when he became governor, he became
so powerful and I think ... maybe he started feeling untouchable

because (he gets) political favors from the national government,”

Ferrer said.
From June to July 2006, while in the midst of peace talks
between the government and the MILF, a series of skirmishes
erupted between Ampatuan’s CVOs and some MILF commanders
in four Maguindanao towns over a land issue. The clashes
nearly escalated into a full-blown war between the military and
the MILF. Then Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus
Dureza had to rush to Maguindanao “to work out how to stop
the skirmishes” from threatening the peace process.
Attempts by the Malaysian-led International Monitoring
Team (IMT), Joint Ceasefire Committee and civil society groups
to end the standoff failed. Ampatuan, through his spokesperson,
engineer Norie Unas, warned on July 5, 2006 that “this can
escalate beyond Maguindanao.”
“What is alarming now,” Unas said, “is the demonstrated
sympathy of mayors who sent their troops to fight side by side
against the terrorists.” The “troops” he was referring to were the
CVOs, and 16 of Maguinandao’s 28 mayors had sent their own
CVOs as reinforcement.
Ampatuan, who used to travel in a convoy of heavily armed
escorts, had claimed that a bomb explosion on June 28, 2006
within his own Shariff Aguak town was intended for him. It is
not clear how many were really killed at the time. The figures vary
from four to seven.
But Ampatuan’s war talk and defiance toward the IMT
and ceasefire committees brought to the fore the issue on the
governor’s “private army.”
Ampatuan and Arroyo
O
n July 14, 2006, just as the government was defusing
tensions in Maguindanao and amid criticisms over
the Ampatuans’ “private army,” President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo issued Executive Order 546, which officially
allowed the arming of CVOs.
E.O. 546 ordered the Philippine National Police (PNP) to
support the Armed Forces of the Philippines in combat operations
against insurgents and other serious threats. It also authorized
the police to deputize barangay tanods or village watchmen as
“force multipliers” in the peace and order plan, subject to the
approval of the local peace and order councils, which are chaired
by mayors and governors.
The order, in effect, gave the politicians’ armed guards
or “private armies” the license to go after suspected enemies, and
further boosted the Ampatuans’ bravado.
Arroyo’s support for the Ampatuans did not end with E.O.
546. She also helped build Maguindanao’s lavish capitol, which
cost P218 million, an extravagance for the country’s third poorest
province. At the time the new capitol was built, Maguindanao’s
seat of government was in Sultan Kudarat town along the
Davao-Cotabato highway, a cluster of simple, white, one-story
buildings.
Arroyo’s imprimatur came in the form of a P25 million
donation for the capitol’s construction, taken from her Social
Fund. The new capitol was opened shortly before the May 2007
elections but inaugurated formally only on March 27, 2009, with
Arroyo herself in attendance.
Arroyo’s support was no token assistance. She revered
Ampatuan, calling him “Ama” (father) and visiting him whenever
her schedule permitted.
It is said that this reverence for the Ampatuans had something
to do with the 2004 presidential elections, in which Arroyo ran
for the presidency. Arroyo won in Maguindanao, with her closest
rival, the movie actor Fernando Poe Jr., getting an improbable
zero vote in some towns.
Arroyo would later be exposed through wiretapped
conversations as having manipulated the outcome of that election
in what has since been called the “Hello, Garci” scandal. Arroyo’s
voice was caught and recorded giving orders to then Comelec
Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano to make sure she won the
elections by at least a million votes.

A joint police-military team

inspects a powered cart at a
checkpoint in Mamasapano town.
Photo by Froilan Gallardo
Voters at a precinct in Shariff Aguak
town where the Ampatuans used to
vote look for their names.

When the scandal resulted in calls for Arroyo’s ouster,

Garcillano disappeared. And it was in Maguindanao where he
resurfaced after months in hiding.
Elections, Maguindanao-style
T
he Moro people actually have their own ways of selecting
their leaders. According to bansa.org, the traditional
structure of Moro society “focused on a sultan who was
both a secular and a religious leader and whose authority was
sanctioned by the Quran. The datu were communal leaders who
measured power not by their holdings in landed wealth but by
the numbers of their followers. In return for tribute and labor,
the datu provided aid in emergencies and advocacy in disputes
with followers of another chief.”
But over the years, this indigenous process has been supplanted
by the supposed “democratic” elections.
“Democratic” elections in Maguindanao have been generally
bloody and frequently questioned for statistically improbable
results, but candidates for national posts never seemed to mind.
Politicians running for the presidency, vice presidency and the
Senate have long tapped what is referred to as the “command
vote” of Moro politicians, who still hold feudal control over their
constituents. Opponents could get zero vote in their areas, if
these politicians ordered.
Maguindanao and the four other provinces of the ARMM
have often been collectively referred to as the country’s “cheating
capital.” Amina Rasul, convenor of the Philippine Council for
Islam and Democracy, calls the region a reservoir of votes or
“vote bank” for those who seek national office.
In 2004, then presidential candidate Poe, a veteran movie
star whose films are favorites of Moro constituents, got a highly
unlikely zero vote in several Maguindanao towns. In 2007, when
the opposition won in most other places in the country, the Arroyo
administration’s Team Unity swept the senatorial elections in the
province, with the opposition getting zero.
In the 1990s, when no Mindanawon was elected senator,
senators jokingly referred to a colleague who barely made it to
the 12th seat as “the senator from Mindanao,” or one who got
elected by squeezing out votes from Mindanao. Senator Miguel
Zubiri of Bukidnon, who was elected in 2007, has often been
referred to as “the senator from Maguindanao,” to which his
victory is partly credited. But even as Zubiri himself acknowledges
having this “image problem,” fact is, he faces an election protest
in the Supreme Court for allegedly having gotten elected with the
help of vote padding in Maguindanao.
It was also in the 2007 elections when Ampatuan tested an
electoral formula which other areas in the ARMM followed: the
fielding of unopposed candidates, purportedly to avert violence.
In 2007, the entire slate of candidates running for the
provincial board of Maguindanao, along with their gubernatorial
and vice gubernatorial candidates, Ampatuan and his son Sajid,
ran, unopposed. Candidates in 20 of the 22 Maguindanao towns
also ran unopposed.
Unas said in an interview shortly after the 2007 elections
that there were no opponents in the 20 towns because Ampatuan
wanted to avoid trouble in the province.
He said the governor went around the province asking
potential challengers what they could offer better than the others
in terms of governance. If they couldn’t, they were asked how
much money they were preparing for the campaign and told to
just keep the money and use it for non-electoral pursuits. Unas
denied allegations that potential challengers were paid a million
pesos each.
No contest, no choice
E
ven voters in Maguindanao and the rest of the
ARMM, however, think the “no opposition” formula is
good because it prevents violence.
The results of a survey conducted by the Social Weather
Stations on Mindanao Muslim attitudes toward democracy and

elections in February 2008 showed that two out of three voters in

the ARMM “prefer unopposed candidates for the sake of peace.”
In the rest of Mindanao outside the ARMM, however, “half of
the Muslims want voters to have a choice.”
Sixty-two percent of Muslims in Mindanao believe it is
“good to have unopposed candidates” since “it reduces campaign
violence and insecurity” while only 38 percent said it is important
to have at least two candidates for every position, so that everyone
would have a choice.
Within the ARMM it was a 65:35 ratio in favor of unopposed
candidates; in the non-ARMM areas in Mindanao it was 49:51.
Maguindanao scored the highest at 86 percent, with voters saying
it is “good to have an unopposed candidate” and only 14 percent
saying there should be more candidates.
In 2010, Andal Jr., the patriarch’s son and namesake and
then incumbent mayor of Datu Unsay town, wanted to run for
governor unopposed like his father did in 2007. That is, until
Mangudadatu decided to put up a fight.
Mangudadatu, a former Ampatuan ally and nephew, was bent
on running, even after he was advised against doing so by national
leaders of the administration Lakas-Kampi party to which both he
and Ampatuan belonged. Mangudadatu’s insistence on running
is said to have irked Andal Jr. who, unlike the college-educated
Mangudadatu, did not even complete a grade school education.
The Mangudadatus had expected violent reactions from the
Ampatuans with the filing of his certificate of candidacy. But no
one could have expected it would be as bloody as to make it the
country’s worst election-related brutality.
The ‘Ampatuan Massacre’

November 23, 2009. That Monday morning, a convoy of
Mangudadatu’s relatives, lawyers and the media, led by his wife
Genalin, was on its way to the provincial Comelec office in Shariff
Aguak 50 kilometers away to submit, in Mangudadatu’s behalf, his
certificate of candidacy for governor.
Mangudadatu had intended them to be proxies. Since his
presence would have surely ignited a confrontation, he sought
refuge in representatives he thought would be untouchable:
women and media persons.
In Ampatuan town, the convoy, along with occupants in two
other vehicles that happened to be passing through, was stopped
by about a hundred heavily armed men led by Andal Jr.
The victims were herded toward Sitio Masalay in Barangay
Salman some 3.5 kilometers uphill and, despite their being mostly
women and media persons, massacred. The killers even wanted to
bury the bodies in shallow graves; hence the presence of a backhoe
in the area. But time apparently ran out for them.
A total of 197 persons have been implicated in the massacre,

28 of them surnamed Ampatuan. But only six clan members
are detained: the patriarch, his sons Andal Jr., Zaldy, Anwar and
Sajid, and his son-in-law Akmad or “Tato,” his eldest daughter’s
husband. The rest are at large.
The day after the massacre, Arroyo issued Proclamation 1946
declaring a state of emergency to “prevent and suppress the
occurrence of similar other incidents of lawless violence.”
The declaration of a state of emergency and later martial law in
December 2009 led to the seizure and excavation of firearms and
ammunition. In one digging alone, said 601st Infantry Brigade
chief Col. Leo Cresente Ferrer, the arms cache was enough to
supply two battalions.
While martial law in Maguindanao was lifted within a few
weeks, the province remains under a state of emergency. All gun
licenses and permits to carry firearms are canceled, so civilians
cannot move around with firearms or with armed bodyguards, as
in the era of the Ampatuans.
But authorities acknowledged that loyalists or private armies
of the Ampatuan clan remained a threat during the elections,
even if they may have been dispersed from Shariff Aguak in the
days following the November 23 massacre.

Former Datu Unsay Mayor Andal

Ampatuan Jr.’s first day in a Manila jail.
Photo by Mario Ignacio
Of the 698 election hotspots in the EastMinCom’s area of
responsibility, 300 were in Region 12, 168 of them in Maguindanao.
Of the five areas under EastMinCom that were reported to have
51 “partisan armed groups” 42 were in Maguindanao with about
3,330 armed followers.
The EastMinCom also noted that the “presence of unidentified
armed groups in isolated areas, especially in the second district
of Maguindanao (where the Ampatuan-contollled towns are),
causes apprehension which may affect the outcome of the
elections.”
Elections 2010
Following the Ampatuan Massacre, Maguindanao became the
most watched province in the country. “People reacted. So did
institutions like the media, the Church, even the Armed Forces and
the Philippine National Police. They were shocked by the gravity
of that incident,” said Ramon Casiple, chairman of the election
watchdog group Vote Peace.
Months later, with at least six leaders of the Ampatuan clan in

jail, tensions were defused, and the campaign period and election
day itself in Maguindanao turned out to be relatively peaceful.
But several incidents of violence were recorded by the PNP
and Vote Peace in the weeks leading to election day. These
incidents were either election-related or had something to with
the Ampatuan trial.
On February 19, seven men with M-16 rifles and M-203
grenade launchers opened fire at the house of Mayor Zacaria
Sangki of Ampatuan town. An improvised explosive device was
also found earlier that day near a gasoline station he owns. No
one was hurt. But on March 21, barely a month after the attack,
two of his supporters were wounded when unidentified men fired
six rounds of mortars at his house.
The Sangki clan is related to both the Ampatuans and

Mangudadatus. Sangki’s son, Rasul, is a state witness in the

Ampatuan massacre.
On April 15, a bodyguard of then North Kabuntalan Mayor
Mark Fermin was shot by suspected supporters of then Vice
Mayor Muslimin Baliwan. The victim survived while the suspects
escaped on a pump boat. A few weeks later, a man on a motorcycle
sped past Fermin’s house in Cotabato City and threw a grenade.
Police concluded the incidents were due to political rivalry. Both
Fermin and Baliwan lost in the elections.
Days before the polls, a relative of provincial board member
Mike Midtimbang, 10-year-old Shaina Kyla, was wounded on the
right leg when a group of men on two vehicles opened fire at his
house. The Midtimbangs, related by affinity to the Ampatuans,
are at odds with the Masturas.
On May 6, as the elections neared, two civilians were
wounded during a strafing incident between the lawless faction
of the MILF and the group of Lenimar Sali, president of Datu
Unsay’s Association of Barangay Captains.
In Maguindanao, there were only two reported deaths caused
by electoral violence. The earliest recorded casualty of an election-
related incident was on January 18. Barangay councilman Salahodin
Talusob Kalib was on his way home in Kalkal, Ampatuan when he
was shot by unidentified men with M16 rifles. Although he was not
running for office, police said it was poll-related.
In Parang, a 12-year-old boy died and four other children
were wounded when a bomb went off inside a parked jeepney
on February 27. The children were playing inside the vehicle. The
bomb was reportedly for Councilor Hadj Radzak Kasim of the
Liberal Party.
On April 30, a roadside bomb reportedly intended for
Mangudadatu exploded in Barangay Kauran as his convoy of
vehicles on its way to a rally was passing by. No one was hurt.
In a report, Mangudadatu said the group of then Mamasapano
Mayor Bahnarin Ampatuan could be behind the attack. Bahnarin
is one of the 189 ordered arrested in the Maguindanao massacre.
He remains at large.
A few days after, on May 4, Monsour Magellen survived a
bomb explosion near his residence in Barangay Damasulay.
Two men were seen fleeing from the scene. Magellen lost to
Abdulkarim Langkuno in his mayoral bid in Paglat.
On election day itself, armed groups launched four bombing
attacks in several areas in Maguindanao. In Pandag, at 2 a.m.,
two M-79 grenade launcher rounds were fired 200 meters away
from a polling precinct. At 9 a.m., a hand grenade exploded in
Shariff Aguak. An hour later, another hand grenade was thrown
but did not go off at a polling precinct in Paglat. By 12:40 p.m.,
three rounds of an M-203 grenade launcher exploded 300 meters
away from the Army’s 29th Infantry Battalion, the contingent
tasked to protect the precincts in Magaslong, Datu Piang. No
casualties were reported.
Also on election day, a group of armed men, purportedly
members of the MILF, barged into the Lintukan Elementary
School in Datu Piang and harassed voters and the Board of
Election Inspectors. No one was harmed.
In Matanog town on the same day, supporters of the mayor
and vice mayor clashed during an encounter. No one was also
harmed.
Two days earlier, supporters of Buldon mayoral candidate
Tucas were also harassed by an armed group that tried to block
the delivery of voting machines to polling centers. The elections
officer decided to temporarily return the machines to the town
hall.
Mangudadatu’s uneasy victory
M
angudadatu won the governorship. But fears for
his security led him to ride an Army Simba tank from
his hometown Buluan, tailed by a convoy of security
escorts, to the capitol, passing through the General Santos-
Cotabato national highway, for his proclamation on May 14.
Mangudadatu said he took this unusual mode of transport on
the advice of Army officers. “For security purposes,” he explained.

Governor-elect Esmael
Mangudadatu arrives at the
capitol in Shariff Aguak for his
proclamation on May 14 on a
Simba tank provided by the Army.
Comelec officials proclaim Esmael
Mangudadatu, in black shirt, and
Ismael Mastura, in white, Maguindanao
governor and vice governor.

“There were threats that bombs were placed along the highway
and were set to explode when I passed.”
As early as then, Mangudadatu and Mastura said they would
not hold office at the capitol in Shariff Aguak but at the old one
in Simuay, Sultan Kudarat town as soon as it is rehabilitated.
But repairs on the old capitol, which supposedly would take at
least six months, had not even begun as of December 2010. Until
the capitol is restored, the two newly elected officials would hold
office in each one’s hometown.
At the ARMM Peace Summit in September 2010, Mangudadatu
arrived at the Shariff Kabunsuan Cultural Center in Cotabato
City on board a dark bluish gray Toyota Sequoia Platinum SUV,
believed to be bulletproof, and a convoy of 11 vehicles, among
them two Army trucks.
“I doubled my security,” he said, explaining that the death
threats against him have not stopped. “Even mayors require
escorts. There are assassination plots against me. If I have no
escorts, they may just kill me.”
Although Mangudadatu is now governor of Maguindanao,
and despite Ampatuan being in jail, 10 other Ampatuan clan
members implicated in the November 23 massacre won elective
positions in the May 10, 2010 polls.
“The hold of that man in traditional areas (is still) uncontested,”

said Fr. Eliseo Mercado Jr., executive director of the Institute for
Autonomy and Governance and former president of the Notre
Dame University in Cotabato City, referring to Ampatuan who
served as Maguindanao governor from 2001 to January 2009 and
as acting governor just before the massacre.
Andal Jr. and Zaldy did not run for any elective post but
fielded their wives. The rest, including the patriarch, filed their
certificates of candidacy before the deadline on December 1, just
a week after the massacre.
When Mangudadatu announced he would run for governor,
few people believed he would win. He had the support of only five
mayors out of Maguindanao’s 36 towns. But he linked up with
the Masturas, a powerful clan that has control over a few but
vote-rich towns.
In early December 2009, Energy Undersecretary Zamzamin
Ampatuan, the nominee of a party-list group and a relative of the
Ampatuans, expressed concern over Ampatuan’s decision to run
for vice governor and field a daughter as one of the opponents.
The decision reached at a meeting of political leaders in Shariff
Aguak after the massacre was for Sinsuat to run for governor and
Datu Midpantao Midtimbang for vice governor as earlier agreed
upon with the patriarch.
But at the last minute, Ampatuan decided to run for
vice governor, prompting Midtimbang to run for governor.
Mangudadatu won by a slight margin. He would have lost if
Sinsuat’s and Midtimbang’s votes were combined. Ampatuan lost
to Mastura by a huge margin.
Yearlong state of emergency

On November 21, 2010, two days before the anniversary of the
massacre, a meeting was held in Manila to discuss whether or not
the yearlong state of emergency should be lifted. Mangudadatu
said he was in favor of a lifting “so we can invite investors,” but
Secretary Luwalhati Antonino, chairperson of the Mindanao
Development Authority, suggested it be done after December,
given the recent spate of kidnappings.
Earlier in June, a week before ending her nine-year reign
as president, Arroyo, through then Executive Secretary Leandro
Mendoza, said her administration would leave to President-elect
Benigno Simeon Aquino III the decision on whether to lift the state
of emergency in Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces and
Cotabato City.
Mendoza said the decision to maintain the state of emergency
was in line with the recommendation of the Departments of

Defense and the Interior and Local Government. “There is still

violence, threats to lives and property (in these areas). Let the
next administration study the possibility of lifting the state of
emergency in Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and Cotobato City,”
Mendoza told reporters in Malacañang.

Also in June, Ferrer, then chief of EastMinCom and

administrator of martial law in Maguindanao in December 2009,
said he would rather that the newly elected officials convene
the Provincial Peace and Order Council to discuss the situation
and make their recommendations on the lifting of the state of
emergency.
On September 1, at the weekly Tapatan sa ARMM in Cotabato
City, Police Senior Superintendent Allen Fortes, deputy regional
director for operations of the Police Regional Office of the
ARMM, said, “The situation in Maguindanao is going normal.”
In the same forum, Col. Prudenco Asto, chief of the 6th
Infantry Division’s Public Affairs Office, agreed with Fortes’
assessment but said, “Napakaganda nitong state of emergency
(The state of emergency is effective). Now you don’t see people
carrying firearms.”
He said lifting the state of emergency could mean a return to
the old days when firearms were displayed publicly. “Parang ‘wild,
wild west’ na naman tayo (We will be like ‘wild, wild west’ all over
again),” he said.
Ali Macabalang, chief of the ARMM’s Bureau of Public
Information, said the Regional Law Enforcement Coordinating
Committee discussed in a meeting in late August the lifting of
the state of emergency following complaints by the private sector,
especially those who have transactions at the Polloc Port in Parang,
Maguindanao, about its negative psychological impact on business.
But the committee, he said, decided to wait till February 2011
to recommend the lifting of the state of emergency, or at least
limit its scope.
In the meantime, Mangudadatu seems to have settled down
in Buluan, holding office in what was intended to be a training
center but is now called the “satellite office,” while awaiting the
restoration of the original capitol in Sultan Kudarat.
In August, Mastura said the rehabilitation would require
several millions of pesos and may be done in phases. But no
action has been taken because the provincial board was still
awaiting the report of the committee set up by the governor to
look into the rehabilitation requirements. Without the report, no
appropriation can be made.
Citizens have been heard on radio asking if it were possible
to just have a “mobile capitol” like the “mobile hospital” or
hospital-bus, so that it can be moved to any place where the
governor resides.
But that seems unlikely. The provincial legislature headed by
Mastura has passed Resolution 4 “recognizing the satellite office
of the Provincial Governor of Maguindanao in Buluan for security
reasons due to the prevailing arm(ed) sightings and other related
threats as a result of the recent Maguindanao massacre.”

Election Watchlist Areas in Maguindanao

1 Ampatuan 15 Gen. S. K. Pendatun
2 Barira 16 Guindulungan
3 Buldon 17 Kabuntalan (Tumbao)
4 Buluan 18 Mamasapano
5 Datu Abdullah Sangki 19 Mangudadatu
6 Datu Anggal Midtimbang 20 Matanog
7 Datu Blah T. Sinsuat 21 Northern Kabuntalan
8 Datu Hoffer Ampatuan 22 Pagagawan
9 Datu Odin Sinsuat (Dinaig) 23 Pagalungan
10 Datu Paglas 24 Paglat
11 Datu Piang 25 Pandag
12 Datu Salibo 26 Parang
13 Datu Saudi-Ampatuan 27 Rajah Buayan
14 Datu Unsay 28 Shariff Aguak (Maganoy)
29 Shariff Saydona Mustapha
30 South Upi
31 Sultan Kudarat (Nuling)
32 Sultan Mastura
33 Sultan sa Barongis (Lambayong)
34 Talayan
35 Talitay
36 Upi
Authorities warn the public against former CAFGU members from
Lagayan, Abra. Photo by Artha Kira Paredes
ABRA
Bloody struggle
for control of
public funds
By Artha Kira Paredes
T
he first day in office of the newly elected leaders
of Abra’s capital town Bangued dawned with a blast,
literally.
An improvised bomb exploded in front of the
municipal hall at 2 a.m. of June 30, 2010, just hours
before Bangued’s incoming officials headed by Mayor Ryan Luna
were to take their oaths of office.
No one was hurt, damage was placed at a minimal P50,000,
and the only disruption the blast caused was the delay in the
disbursement of town employees’ salaries. But the incident
capped the series of violent incidents that made the province
newsworthy for the entire election period.
The 33-year-old Luna speculated that the bombing was done
Artha Kira Paredes is a freelance journalist who has written extensively on Abra’s
peace and order situation. She grew up in Abra thinking it was normal to carry a
gun around.

ABRA: Bloody struggle for control of public funds
on the behest of someone bitter about the election results, and he

could have been referring to 62-year-old Dominic Valera, whom
he unseated as mayor.
Yet it was Luna and his men who had been keeping close
watch over the town hall for days before the bombing, ostensibly
to prevent Valera from withdrawing the town’s remaining P25
million budget. The police said they could do nothing about
the presence of Luna’s men in the municipal hall, since they
were doing nothing wrong. Valera denied the accusation he had
planned to take the funds.
The accusations and counter-accusations highlight what lies
beneath the violence: The fight between Abra’s two main dynasties
for political and economic control of the province.
Over the years, the names and the players have changed, but
there have always been two contending clans, usually related by
blood or affinity, with various members essaying supporting roles
in Abra’s political drama. Over the years, as well, Abra’s political
families and their supporters have sacrificed lives, careers and
reputations in exchange for a rule that may last from a few years
to a few decades.

Seares-Luna vs.
Valera-Bernos in 2010
R
yan Luna is only the most visible and controversial
member of his clan, having gained notoriety for using
Army-type trucks during the campaign and for defying the
Commission on Elections (Comelec) by holding a shootfest on
the first day of the gun ban. He also had the most number of
supporters who became collateral damage in the 2010 elections.
But his family’s acknowledged leader is his mother, former
congresswoman Cecilia Seares-Luna, who lost her bid to be
reelected representative of Abra’s lone district. The candidate who
defeated her was Ma. Jocelyn “Joy” Valera-Bernos, the daughter of
Dominic Valera and widow of former La Paz Mayor Marc Ysrael
Bernos, who was assassinated in 2006. Dominic is considered the
current family leader.
In the true fashion of Abra politics, the Seares-Luna and
Valera-Bernos families were once allies who comprised the
“opposition” to the dynasty of jailed Abra Governor Vicente
Valera, alleged mastermind in the murder in 2006 of his nephew,
Congressman Luis Bersamin Jr. Vicente (no relation to Dominic)
is the second cousin of Luis’ mother.
The Seares-Lunas and Valera-Bernoses, however, officially
severed friendly ties in the 2010 elections when Ryan, formerly
the president of the Association of Barangay Captains, filed his
candidacy for Bangued mayor opposite Dominic. In retaliation,
Joy filed her candidacy as representative of Abra’s lone district,
challenging Cecilia.
The recognized leaders of both families—Dominic Valera and
Cecilia Seares-Luna—lost in the May 2010 elections. But Dominic
managed to make a comeback as barangay captain of Bangued’s
Zone 5 in the October 25 barangay elections, illustrating the
lengths and depths to which these political clans would go to
hang on to power.
But although Dominic is the acknowledged leader, Abrenians
believe that the Valera-Bernos family is actually led by the Bernos
patriarch Andres, former Abra governor, who was perceived to be
the real kingmaker in the May 2010 elections. Bernos lost his two
sons—Joy’s husband Marc and seven-year-old Lino Marciano—
when his family was ambushed by New People’s Army (NPA)
rebels while he was governor in 1985. Since entering the Abra
political scene in the 1960s, he has gained a wealth of knowledge
and experience on tactics and strategies in trekking Abra’s
treacherous political jungle.

Family feuds through history
A
bra is a landlocked mountainous province about 400
kilometers north of Manila. One of six provinces of the
Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), it has the most
number of towns—27 in all.

Mario Acena, 33, a supporter of Bangued

mayoral bet Ryan Luna, was killed on
April 29 allegedly by then incumbent mayor
Dominic Valera, becoming Abra’s first
recorded election-related casualty in the 2010
polls. Luna is now mayor of Bangued.
Photo by Artha Kira Paredes
Acena is buried on May 15, five
days after the elections.

Abra is right next door to Ilocos Sur and Ilocos Norte, two
provinces with their own violent political histories. In fact, it
was part of the Ilocos Region, or Region I, until 1987 when it
came under the Cordilleras. Ilocanos account for two-thirds of
its estimated 230,000 population while the rest are Tingguians,
the collective name used to refer to at least 10 indigenous peoples
groups living in the province.
Abra has been consistently identified as a hotspot during
elections because of the intense political rivalry among feuding
families that dates back to the 1960s when former Army colonel
Carmelo Barbero challenged Jose Valera for the governorship.
Demonstrating the web of kinship ties that characterize Philippine
politics, Barbero’s wife was related to Jose Valera, who was in
turn married to Violeta Paredes, a descendant of former justice
secretary Quintin Paredes whose family ruled Abra for years.
Sources, depending on which political camp they belong
to, give different versions of how and when the use of arms
and goons to win elections first started. A Barbero supporter
said Valera imported goons from other provinces in 1963 and
even extricated inmates from the National Bilibid Prisons in
Muntinlupa. And so, to “fight fire with fire,” Barbero made use
of the infamous saka-saka (saka being the Ilocano word for foot),
barefoot goons who comprised the private army of Ilocos Sur
warlord Floro Crisologo. Valera supporters, on the other hand,
would reverse the story and say it was Barbero who initiated the
use of goons.
After Barbero’s victory as governor, the Paredes-Valeras were
shut out of the political picture for more than two decades.
During this time, Barbero also served as deputy defense minister
under Juan Ponce Enrile, one of the country’s most powerful
men during the martial law years.
The Paredes-Valeras reentered the picture only in 1986,
when Corazon Aquino rose to the presidency and appointed Jose
Valera’s son Vicente officer-in-charge or acting governor of Abra.
He in turn defeated Barbero’s son Arturo in the election that
followed.
Valera himself enjoyed two decades of power until he and his
wife Ma. Zita lost in the 2007 elections, he for congressman and
she for governor. Into this vacuum of power have entered the
Seares-Luna and Valera-Bernos clans.
Armed groups prop up rivalries
T
he rivalry among contending political contenders
is often dealt with through violence, aggravated by the
presence of private or partisan armed groups (PAGs) that
politicians are believed to maintain in order to stay in power. The
Philippine National Police (PNP) defines a PAG as an “organized
armed group of two or more persons with legally issued or illegally
possessed firearms for purpose of sowing fear and intimidation
for the advancement and protection of vested economic and/or
political interest of a public official or private individual.”
This is exacerbated by the proliferation of loose firearms.
From July 2009 to June 2010, Abra police have confiscated a total
of 158 firearms. Twelve of these were confiscated from PAGs,
60 from the general populace, eight from custodia legis (under
custody of the law). Thirty-one were surrendered, and seven
recovered from communist terrorists.
In an interview before the elections, Governor Eustaquio
Bersamin, now on his second term, acknowledged the existence
of PAGs in the province which, “like the issue of violence in
general, is a multifaceted issue.”
He blamed poverty for the proliferation of violence, which
he said makes people “desperate, they resort to whatever there
is just to make money.” Bersamin also pointed to the lack of
education, especially among the young who are vulnerable and
impressionable.
“But, of course, the primary culprit is the intense political
rivalry in the province,” he said.
A close look at those who filed candidacies for different posts
in Abra shows that many members of both Seares-Luna and
Valera-Bernos families aspired for public posts.

Candidates from the Seares-Luna

and Valera-Bermos families
Cecilia Seares-Luna Dominic Valera
Lost in her second bid for district representative Lost in his second bid for Bangued mayor
(Elected as barangay captain of Zone 5, Bangued

on October 25)
Andres Bernos
Former Abra governor

Relation: Second Cousins (Seares-Luna’s and Valera’s fathers are first cousins)
Other relatives/in-laws that ran for public office or are incumbent public official
Name/Relation Position Aspired/ Name/Relation Position Aspired/
Election Results Election Results
Ryan Luna Bangued mayor Ma. Jocelyn “Joy” Valera- District representative
Bernos
(Son) (Won) (Daughter) (Won)
Cromwell Luna Tineg mayor Joseph Domino Valera Bangued councilor
(Son) (Lost) (Son) (Won)

Lara Haya Luna Lagayan vice mayor Sylvia Valera-Go Zone 5, Bangued
barangay captain
(Daughter) (Won) (Daughter)
Allan Seares Bangued vice mayor Jannsen Valera Pidigan vice mayor
(Nephew) (Won) (Daughter -in-law) (Won)

Robert Victor Seares Dolores mayor Esther Bernos Danglas mayor
(Nephew) (Won) (Mother -in-law of Joy) (Unopposed/Won)

Leonidas Seares Villaviciosa vice mayor Joseph Sto. Nino Bernos La Paz mayor
(Brother) (Lost) (Brother -in-law of Joy) (Unopposed/Won)

Sesy Seares Dolores councilor Menchie Bernos La Paz vice mayor
(Cousin -in-law) (Lost) (wife of Joseph) (Unopposed/Won)

Correa Seares Provincial Board member
(Cousin -in-law) (Lost)

Mark Seares Zone 4, Bangued
barangay captain
(Nephew) (reelected in 2010)
Collateral damage
W
eeks before the June 30 blast, at least five of Ryan
Luna’s supporters were shot while one became the
first and only election murder victim reported by
the police during the campaign. Four were shot in an April 11
ambush on their way back from a campaign sortie in a convoy
with Luna from Barangay Sappaac while another was shot four
times at a relative’s house in Barangay Calot on April 28.
A day later, on April 29, witnesses accused Valera of killing
supporter Mario Acena in Barangay Cosili West. Valera was
arrested for the murder, but he tested negative for paraffin.
He was held under hospital arrest until he was cleared by the
Department of Justice on June 15, 2010.
Before that, on April 20, unidentified men strafed the house
of then Lacub Vice Mayor Lysander Baroña who was running for
mayor.
These four were recorded as election-related violent incidents
(ERVI) by the Police Regional Office-Cordillera (PRO-COR) in
2010. The incidents show a decline from the 14 recorded in 2004
and 17 in 2007.
Although none of Valera’s supporters were killed, several of his
political followers, including his daughter, have released affidavits to
the national media claiming political harassment and intimidation
by Luna’s group. Former Bangued Municipal Health Officer Maria
Christina Valera-Cabrera accused Luna’s brother Jendricks, the
mayor of Lagayan at the time, of pointing a gun at her in the evening
of April 5. Both Ryan and Jendricks denied the accusations.
None of the incidents reported by Valera’s camp was listed
among the ERVIs. The Valera-Bernoses have questioned the
exclusion from the list the harassments and intimidation they said
were directed against their followers, and cited this as evidence
of bias on the part of authorities. Had the police counted these
incidents as part of the ERVIs, the number of incidents would be
higher than reported.

Money-making politics
amid poverty
T
he fight for political control of Abra lies in the province’s
rich resources. Here, it is common knowledge that politics
is a money-making enterprise.
Visible in the province is the wide discrepancy between
the lifestyles of those who belong to political families and the
rest of the residents. Although politicians own expensive cars
and houses in posh subdivisions in urban areas, the National
Statistics Coordination Board in 2006 ranked the province, with
half its population impoverished, ninth among the top 10 poorest
provinces in the country.
Abra is rich in timber and mineral resources, but much of
its wealth is also sourced from the allocations of the national
government, which come in the form of internal revenue
allotments (IRA).
Since the IRA is based on land area and population, the capital
Bangued, which has the biggest concentration of the population,
has the second biggest allocation. The province’s central business
district, it also earns the most in local tax collections from
business establishments.
But besting Bangued in terms of IRA is the remote town of
Tineg, 80 kilomoters northwest of the capital, the province’s
farthest municipality and also its largest. Every time elections are
held, the positions of mayor of Bangued and Tineg, which enjoy
the biggest IRA, are the most hotly contested.
In Tineg, another Luna sought to be mayor in the May 2010
elections. Elections in the town, which is accessible only by foot
during the rainy season, could not have been more dramatic.
In a handwritten document titled “Affidavit,” 80 individuals
from Barangay Agsimao accused 50 of Cromwell Luna’s men of
indiscriminately firing high-powered guns during the kindergarten
graduation at the Tineg Central School on March 23. Cromwell
is Ryan’s brother.
27 Abra towns and their Internal Revenue Allotments (highest to lowest)
Percentage of
Registered voters
Municipality IRA (2009)1 Area (in sq km)2 Population (2007) actual voters
(2010)3
(2010)3
Tineg P68 million 744.80 4,317 3,208 57.45
Bangued P57 million 105.70 46,179 25,560 79.97

Tubo P46 million 409.90 5,588 3,824 82.30
Lacub P37 million 295.30 3,050 2,687 76.74
Malibcong P36 million 283.20 3,354 2,595 85.55
Licuan-Baay P35 million 256.40 3,990 4,755 65.66
Bucay P34 million 127.60 16,266 12,215 87.17
Lagayan P32 million 216.00 4,134 3,188 94.79
Lagangilang P32 million 101.40 13,490 8,981 79.72
Boliney P32 million 216.90 3,349 2,781 80.73
Luba P30 million 148.30 6,363 4,603 77.97
Danglas P29 million 152.70 5,411 3,387 71.07
La Paz P29 million 51.40 14,658 9,706 85.18
Tayum P29 million 61.10 13,360 8,397 81.10
Dolores P28 million 80.40 10,787 6,631 30.10
Sallapadan P28 million 106.50 6,370 5,232 70.70
Pilar P27 million 66.10 9,792 6,233 86.80
Pidigan P26 million 49.20 11,280 6,663 86.13
Manabo P26 million 111.00 10,538 6,774 81.80
San Juan P26 million 64.10 9,714 6,833 72.79
Langiden P25 million 116.30 3,242 2,419 82.51
Villaviciosa P25 million 89.80 5,147 3,756 86.82
Daguioman P23 million 101.00 1,916 1,327 86.21
San Quintin P23 million 66.60 5,341 3,682 85.61
Peñarrubia P22 million 38.30 6,443 4,674 75.82
San Isidro P21 million 48.10 4,647 3,056 88.61
Bucloc P20 million 50.00 2,227 1,750 52.80
ABRA PROVINCE P470 million 4,158.10 230,953 154,917 78.15 (121,071)
1 Abra’s Provincial Planning and Development Office

2 Department of Public Works and Highways provincial office
3 Commission on Elections

Among those who signed were Polish priest Pawel Jacek Stadnik,
Sister Purisa Tayaban of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and
Lenin Benwaren, one of the four individuals who, like Cromwell,
wanted to be Tineg mayor.
In answer, Cromwell filed his own complaint at the Office
of the Provincial Prosecutor, charging Benwaren and 11 of his
companions with attempted murder for allegedly ambushing
his group earlier the same day. Both candidates lost their bids;
incumbent Edwin Crisologo won his third and last term.
Tineg has only a little more than 3,000 registered voters, but
it has generated much interest for the same reason as Bangued—
its IRA pegged at P68 million in 2009. And although there have
been recent efforts to establish structures such as a police station
and construction of a new town hall is ongoing, Tineg’s leaders
have yet to make its residents feel the presence of the local
government.
Absent government
I
t isn’t only in Tineg where the local government’s presence
could hardly be felt. In reality, a significant number of Abra’s
local officials actually live and spend most of their days in
Bangued.
In his 2005 special report, former PNP chief Jesus Verzosa,
who at the time was CAR police director, found a “concentration
of local chief executives” in the capital, earning it the moniker
“central government.”
Fifteen mayors had “extension offices” that served as their
residences in Bangued, along with their security detail that
included some PNP personnel, Versoza’s report said. It also
described the residences as “luxurious” and constituted an
“ostentatious display of wealth.”
Since the towns are “abandoned,” the “void leaves the
territorial jurisdiction vulnerable to insurgent infiltration,
influence, harassment and attacks,” according to the report. The
concentration of local officials in Bangued, in turn, has made it a
magnet for violence. A veteran radio commentator once likened
Abra to Iraq—thus the recent portmanteau Abraq (Abra and
Iraq)—and Bangued to Baghdad because “it is where everything
happens.”
And to underscore how bizarre things can be in Bangued, the
police found the body of Tineg resident Roy Gudao buried two
feet deep in the backyard of Tineg Mayor Crisologo’s house cum
satellite office in Barangay Ubbod, Bangued. The mayor, who was
not in his house at the time the body was recovered, said he had
no idea what happened to the victim.
Peace efforts
E
arly on, the refusal of Bangued candidates to sign a peace
covenant was a telltale sign of a very tense, if not violent
situation that would precede and follow the conduct of the
May 10 elections.
But despite this, compared to previous election years, there
have been greater efforts to keep peace, especially with the
establishment of the Abra Multi-Sectoral Group (AMSG) under
the guidance of Divine Word Bishop Leopoldo Jaucian of the
Bangued diocese.
The AMSG is composed of representatives from the Church,
civil society organizations, local government units, Comelec, the
PNP and the Armed Forces of the Philippine (AFP). As early as
August 26, 2009, the group signed a joint position statement along
with elected officials calling for “lasting peace” and condemning
“violence as a means of managing conflict.”
In late March, the Church initiated a gathering at the St. James
the Elder Cathedral during which the candidates presented their
platforms and the bishop blessed them. The Church-owned radio
station DZPA hosted forums where candidates aired their plans
and platforms in its program “Puso ti Abra” (Heart of Abra). In
the days leading to the elections, the diocese led a prayer rally for
peaceful elections and released a pastoral letter emphasizing that
voting is a “sacred right.”

The initiatives were for Abrenians to realize that “now is the

time” to believe “the power to change does not solely depend on
the Church, on the PNP, on the AFP,” said Jaucian. “This is also
the time probably that the Abrenians will claim in their hands
that the power is in their hands to really decide change.”
On election day, the bishop himself roved the province as part
of a “striking force” that included Concerned Citizens of Abra for
Good Government (CCAGG) chairperson Pura Sumangil and
Carmelita Bersalona, a pioneer CCAGG member. The team did
troubleshooting in places where tension was reported.
The Church is not only the institution that worked to achieve
clean, honest and peaceful elections. The provincial government,
under Bersamin, brother of the late congressman Luis, initiated
the annual Week for Peace in 2008 to create awareness on peace
issues as well as the Luis Bersamin Peace Prize in 2010 that paid
tribute to those who have contributed to the cause of peace.
Aside from deploying 1,300 policemen for public safety for
2010, the PNP took a different approach to the usual signing of
a provincial peace covenant by initiating a signing in every town.
Candidates in only 17 out of Abra’s 27 towns, however, agreed to
enter peace covenants.
‘Peaceful’ election day
I
n the “Initial Post-Election Assessment on Abra,” Police
Superintendent Cesar De Los Reyes Pasiwen, Task Force
Abra Staff for intelligence, wrote that from May 9 to 10 “the
most common forms of election-related incidents were mostly
intimidation and vote-buying with no deaths caused by political
violence recorded.”
“The automated elections may be considered a success in
the absence of anomalies and violations previously common
in voting/canvassing areas such as ballot box snatching, flying
voters, dagdag-bawas (vote padding and shaving), etc.,” the report
said.
On election eve, Senior Superintendent Joseph Adnol, who
was the province’s police director then, said candidates had sent
emissaries to do what is called panagbukwal (Ilocano word that
means to dig up and transplant), the act of getting voters to
choose candidates at the last minute by offering a higher amount
for their votes.
Several reports claimed armed men knocked on doors and
pointed guns to voters’ heads so they would have no option but
to receive the money.
While Adnol declared the conduct of elections “peaceful,”
Fr. Drexel Ramos, Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting
(PPCRV) coordinator, observed that instances of “intimidation”
were frequently heard.
As a result, very few offered to do volunteer work for the
PPCRV and National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections
(Namfrel). PPCRV is a “parish-based political but nonpartisan lay
movement established in 1991” while Namfrel is the country’s
pioneer organization in election monitoring.
The number of volunteers was lower compared to previous
years because, Adnol said, people were “afraid.”
“We had difficulty recruiting. It was like nobody wanted to
volunteer,” Ramos said.
Of the 547 who signed up, many did not report on election
day, particularly in the towns of Pidigan, Danglas, Lagayan, La
Paz, Tineg, Lacub, Tayum and Bangued.
It appears that the volunteers were not the only ones who
were afraid. Only 78.15 percent of Abra’s registered voters cast
their votes on election day. Dolores town, where Socorro Valera-
Guzman and nephew Robert Victor Guzman-Seares Jr. battled it
out for mayor and reportedly barricaded each other’s supporters,
had the lowest voter turnout at 30.1 percent. Tineg registered the
second lowest number of actual voters at 57.45 percent.
Unfortunately, the “most common forms” of election-
relative violence observed during the election period failed to
make it to the roster of ERVIs. Also, if Abra’s culture of violence
and indifference is to be considered, the impact of peace efforts
may take some time to trickle down to the general populace. An

A voter writes down his precinct number

and voter’s number on his legs as “kodigo”
or cheat sheet. Photo by Artha Kira Paredes
Young Abrenians join a rally calling
for peaceful elections in their province.

Ateneo de Manila University survey reveals the relatively wide

acceptance of violence in the province.
Public armed groups
E
fforts for a lasting peace notwithstanding, it may take
a while before the image of Abra is changed, given that
high-profile killings in the past remain fresh in people’s
minds. Among those who have perished in election violence
are Congressman Bersamin, Mayor Bernos, Sangguniang
Panlalawigan member James Bersamin, Tubo Mayor Jose Segundo
Sr. and Tineg Mayor Clarence Benwaren.
Aside from incidents of harassment in the last elections,
the integrity of both the police and the military was questioned,
especially by the Valera-Bernos group. On more than one
occasion, congressional bet Joy accused the police of being biased
against them while ally Tineg Mayor Crisologo accused the 41st
Infantry Battalion of serving as Cromwell’s goons in his town.
Joy’s allegation may have not exactly been unfounded,
especially with the relief of Senior Superintendent Ernesto Gaab
after the province was placed under Comelec control. Gaab
was relieved for his “alleged bias to some of the candidates and
inaction in some issues.”
Lt. Col. Ignacio Madriaga was also relieved as the battalion’s
commanding officer days after the election, but Col. Essel Soriano,
commanding officer of the 503rd Infantry Brigade, said it was
because Madriaga had already served the maximum two years in
Abra.
In his May 3 statement, Diego Wadagan, spokesperson of the
NPA’s Agustin Begnalen Command in Abra, said, “The presence
of PNP and AFP forces in the province does not improve the peace
and order situation in Abra.”
“They tolerate and support the warlords and are even the
perpetrators of crimes and disturbances in communities. In most
incidents of the election-related violence, PNP personnel were
either involved, within the scene of the crime but did not act or
Startling Statistics
The Ateneo School of Government polled 150 individuals from different Abra municipalities in 2009 and
found that while 94.6 percent of them agreed that a person’s life is sacred…
22.7% agreed
that it is
more acceptable to kill than
28% agreed that a
brave person
will not retreat, no matter
34% agreed that
violence
is normal and is part of
steal who the enemy everyday life
44.7% agreed
that life
can be equated with money
40.7% agreed
that if
they experience anything
56.7% agreed
that it is
okay for victims of violence
or money is more valuable directed against them, they not to get justice
that one’s life are likely to take revenge
36.7% agreed
that it is 24.7% agreed
that they
54.7% disagreed
that there
is a recognition of authority
okay to kill for survival needed to arm themselves that deter them from
as protection against thinking about committing
enemies violent acts
49.3% agreed
that
violence is purposive and is a
necessary resort 38.7% agreed
that
violence happens without
reason
28% agreed that

violence is not
personal, the end justifies
the means

respond to calls for help,” Wadagan said, adding that the local
police were “scared to go against the Luna clan.”
The last paragraph of Wadagan’s two-page statement read,
“Ironically, the PNP and the 503rd Brigade are heralded as the
peacekeepers of Abra when it is they who are in cahoots with
private armed groups run by power-hungry warlord-politicians.”
Another issue that surfaced during the election period was the
loyalty of some members of the Citizens Armed Force Geographical
Unit (CAFGU) to local politicians. This led Abrenians to come up
with their own definition of PAG: public armed group.
Before elections, Abra had 16 CAFGU detachments or half
the 32 CAFGU detachments under the responsibility of the 503rd
Infantry Brigade, spanning the provinces of Ilocos Sur, Ilocos
Norte, La Union, Abra and Benguet.
With the dissolution on April 14 of the detachment in Lagayan
where Jendricks was mayor, the number of detachments dropped
to 15. Soriano said all 39 CAFGU Active Auxiliaries (CAAs) in the
Lagayan resigned and the detachment commander, T/Sgt. Cesar
Zarate, was “under investigation.” Several members of the Lagayan
CAFGU were seen with Cromwell in Tineg on March 23.
The civilian volunteers have long been suspected of doubling
as goons of politicians who not only select and endorse them to
the Army but also support their training. Their debt of gratitude
to politicians eventually leads them to agree to serve as private
armies.
While evidence of the existence of public armed groups may
point to the Seares-Lunas, the Valera-Bernoses are not exactly
saints either. Jendricks had earlier accused them of importing
goons from other provinces to serve as their hitmen.
Police reports also said the patriarch Andres Bernos recruited
“wanted persons” who would be used in “reprisal killings after
the election period.” Hans Luna, a lawyer and one of Cecilia’s
eight children, also accused the media of seemingly putting all
the blame on his family.
Winners and losers
I
f the automated elections were as reliable as they seemed
and vote-buying and intimidation were discounted, then the
results can be said to reflect the voice of the Abrenians.
There are speculations that Joy Valera-Bernos won because
the Bersamin family, known to adhere to nonviolent and non-
aggressive means of governance, endorsed her over Cecilia Seares-
Luna. Other sources said Cecilia lost because she had demanded
between 40 and 60 percent in kickbacks from infrastructure
projects and because her sons were disrespectful of authorities.
The Bersamins, however, might find their choice eventually
smearing the respect and popularity they enjoy, if Joy turns out
to be no better than her predecessor, what with talk brewing that
she has been demanding the same amount in kickbacks and even
deducting 50 percent from the pay of laborers.
As to why Dominic Valera lost to Ryan Luna, popular opinion
has it that he had demanded exorbitant taxes from business
establishments, prompting even the giant cellular phone
networks to pull out their cell sites from the capital town, causing
low mobile phone signals. Many have also accused the former
mayor of taking lives. Tarpaulins posted in parts of Bangued
show people bathed in blood, allegedly murdered on Dominic’s
bidding. Dominic has been in charged in court but has yet to be
convicted.
The explosion that rocked Bangued on the dawn of its new
leadership might yet be again another indication of the type
of administration that Abrenians could expect—dangerous,
disastrous and violent. Elected leaders have the next three years
to prove otherwise.

Election Watchlist Areas in Abra
1 Bangued
2 Boliney
3 Danglas
4 Dolores
5 Lacub
6 Lagayan
7 Langiden
8 Malibcong
9 Tayum
10 Tubo
The Philippine Air Force conducts an aerial reconnaisance
during the June 2010 special elections in seven towns.
Photo by Richel V. Umel
LANAO DEL SUR
‘Dagdag-bawas’
country counters
automation with
violence
By Ryan Rosauro
A
t around 7 p.m. on June 21, 2010, some six
weeks after the May 10 national elections, armed
men snatched Nuraldin Yusoph as he was leaving
a mosque in Marawi City, after attending evening
prayers.
Two hours later, the kidnappers called Nuraldin’s father,
Elections Commissioner Elias Yusoph, to demand ransom: P25
million and the annulment of poll results in three towns in
Lanao del Sur province in exchange for his son’s freedom.
Various sources, from Lanao del Sur civil society to operators
within a number of political camps, said the kidnapping of
22-year-old Nuraldin was merely a form of revenge by some
politicians who felt aggrieved by something the older Yusoph had
done, or more precisely, did not do. And that was, to ensure that
these politicians win, sources said.
Ryan Rosauro is a Mindanao-based journalist who has covered elections in Lanao

del Sur since 2005.
Brig. Gen. Rey Ardo, chief of the Army’s 103rd Infantry
Brigade which has jurisdiction over Lanao del Sur, had a simple
and straightforward explanation for reporters who covered
Nuraldin’s release after 29 days in captivity. Some politicians just
wanted their bribe money back, he said.
“Politicians who lost a lot of money (in the elections) want
to recoup their losses. That is the reason why Nuraldin was
kidnapped,” Ardo said. “They want to be refunded.”
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), in its luwaran.
com website, said the same thing. “The kidnapping was a collective
effort” of all losers in the election “to force (Commissioner
Yusoph) to refund the bribes given him during the elections,” said
the MILF, which also accused the election official of “(taking)
money from all sides.”
Yusoph, a former Marawi City prosecutor, quickly denied the
accusations and chided Ardo for voicing what he called “rumors
and hearsay.” The Comelec itself played down the story and did
not even see any reason to comment on the kidnapping, much
less investigate allegations against Yusoph, whose appointment
to the Comelec in 2009 was endorsed by the Bishops-Ulama
Conference.
Though the kidnapping happened after June 9, when the
election period ended, and despite the absence of any investigation
by the Comelec, both Yusoph and Comelec spokesperson James
Jimenez acknowledged it had something to do with the elections,
without providing details. The kidnapping was also a manifestation
of something civil society leaders had feared would happen in
traditional fraud-ridden areas as a result of election automation:
Candidates experiencing diminished control over cheating would
channel their frustration into violent retribution.
Political pawns
L
anao del Sur was one of two provinces, the other being
Lanao del Norte, created when what was previously known
simply as Lanao was cut up into two in 1959. Lanao derived

LANAO DEL SUR: ‘Dagdag-bawas’ country counters automation with violence
its name from Lake Lanao, the country’s second largest freshwater
lake. Lake is “ranao” in the local dialect, and its people are called
Maranao, or “people of the lake.” Maranao society is feudal and
clannish, and conflicts are known to be settled through rido or
clan wars.
Lanao del Sur is one of six provinces in the Autonomous Region
in Muslim Mindanao. (Lanao del Norte rejected membership in
the ARMM during a 1989 plebiscite to ratify the Organic Act
creating the ARMM.)
At the time Lanao del Sur was created, the local leadership was
largely controlled by members or allies of the influential Alonto-
Lucman Maranao royalty. The family counts among its members
two former senators, Alauya Alonto who served in the 1930s and
1940s and Domocao Alonto in the 1950s. Other family members
include prominent figures in the Moro liberation struggle—Rashid
Lucman, Abulkhayr Alonto and Maulana Alonto.
The warlord Ali Dimaporo, who descended from the rulers of
a minor sultanate based in Binidayan town, tried to make inroads
into this clout as early as 1949 and 1953 through successful bids
for a congressional seat. Defeated in 1957, he went off exploring
political opportunities in Lanao del Norte where he successfully
built his powerbase. There, Dimaporo held on to power by shifting
between congressional and gubernatorial posts, positions which
today have stayed in the hands of his son, daughter-in-law and
grandchildren.
Dimaporo stood by then President Ferdinand Marcos in 1968,
when the government came under fire for the Jabidah Massacre,
the killing of 28 Muslims who were being trained by the Armed
Forces of the Philippines to invade Sabah in Malaysia. Dimaporo
also proved his loyalty when Marcos declared martial law four
years later.
For his loyalty, Marcos gifted Dimaporo with the gubernatorial
post of Lanao del Sur in 1976, finally getting by appointment
what he failed to acquire by election. Marcos also appointed
Dimaporo concurrent president of the state-owned Mindanao
State University (MSU).
After the 1986 People Power uprising, Dimaporo survived the
anti-Marcos fallout by winning a congressional seat in 1987 and
1992 in the province’s second district but with already diminished
clout.
Since then, new personalities have emerged to take control
of Lanao del Sur’s political arena. These include the Balindongs,
Pangandamans, Adiongs and Dumarpas, old families with an
established a foothold in a string of towns where their relatives
are concentrated. The Adiongs are connected to the Alonto-
Lucman royalty by marriage.
Former fighters of the Moro National Liberation Front
(MNLF) also became political stalwarts—Omar Ali, who held
three terms as mayor of Marawi City from 1998 to 2007, and
Benasing Macarambon, who was second district representative
also within that period. Both were defeated in their gubernatorial
bids but continue to wield influence in local politics. And although
traditional socio-political systems have been torn by the new
mechanisms of mainstream governance, those who hold sway in
Lanao del Sur politics are still those groups and individuals who
are able to do the bidding of the country’s central leadership.
A history of fraud
A
fter several elections, Lanao del Sur has developed a
notoriety for election fraud, whether during national or
mid-term elections.
In 2004, the province figured in the “Hello, Garci” scandal,
the series of wiretapped telephone conversations in which various
government officials, including President Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo herself, were heard asking then Comelec Commissioner
Virgilio Garcillano to manipulate election results.
In one recorded conversation, Arroyo was heard inquiring if
she would still lead by a million votes over her closest rival, the
late former movie star Fernando Poe Jr. Garcillano then replied
that it was possible, “if we can get more in Lanao,” referring to
Lanao del Sur where seven towns had not yet submitted election

returns. The Lanao del Sur results were among the last transmitted
to Congress.
As opposition and civil society complaints would later show,
some of the worst cases of dagdag-bawas or vote-padding and
shaving happened in Lanao del Sur that year. And as it turned
out, the province was where national or senatorial candidates
could draw votes from, in case the numbers showed they were
losing.
No less than Abdullah Dalidig, the provincial chairman of
the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel),
exposed how the Comelec reversed Lanao del Sur’s election
results: It reported Arroyo winning when the Namfrel count
showed Poe with the lead.
In 2006, the Presidential Electoral Tribunal acted on the
electoral complaint filed by defeated vice presidential candidate
Loren Legarda, examined the ballots from Lanao del Sur and
found election returns to be fake.
Indications of possible fraud resurfaced in 2010. Before the
start of the campaign, Lanao del Sur Governor Mamintal Adiong
Jr. expressed apprehension that the province’s master list of
registered voters had yet to be cleaned. He complained that this
matter had been brought to the Comelec’s attention years earlier,
but that nothing was being done about it.
As of March 17, 2009, Lanao del Sur had 515,485 registered
voters in 3,221 precincts,
Lanao del Sur making it the second vote-rich
Congressional districts 2 province in the ARMM next to
Municipalities 39 Maguindanao. For the purpose
City 1
of the 2010 automated elections,
the regular precincts were
Barangays 1,158
grouped into 1,223 clustered
1st congressional district
precincts.
Municipalities 17 The province is composed of
2nd congressional district 39 towns and the capital city of
Municipalities 22 Marawi, and is organized into
two legislative districts. The first
district, accounting for more than half the voters, is made up
of Marawi City and the towns of Buadiposo-Buntong, Bubong,
Bumbaran, Ditsaan-Ramain, Kapai, Lumba-Bayabao, Maguing,
Marantao, Masiu, Mulondo, Piagapo, Poona-Bayabao, Saguiaran,
Tagoloan II, Tamparan, Taraka and Wao.
The second district covers the towns of Bacolod-Kalawi,
Balabagan, Balindong, Bayang, Binidayan, Butig, Calanogas,
Ganassi, Kapatagan, Lumbaca-Unayan, Lumbatan, Lumbayanague,
Madalum, Madamba, Malabang, Marogong, Pagayawan, Picong,
Pualas, Sultan Dumalondong, Tubaran and Tugaya.
Adiong’s camp estimated that close to 200,000 names were
padded into the province’s roll of voters for the 2010 general
elections.
Automated elections in Lanao
A
nd so when the Comelec implemented automated
elections for the first time nationwide in 2010, Lanao del
Sur was among the provinces closely watched.
That is why election watchdogs such as Vote Peace, a project
of the multisectoral Consortium for Electoral Reform, were not
prepared for the scale of violence that erupted in Lanao del Sur
on election day. Vote Peace called Lanao del Sur “the most volatile
area on May 10, registering the most number of incidents from
shooting clashes, strafing to bombings.”
In its official report to the Comelec, the Philippine National
Police (PNP) recorded seven violent incidents on May 10; two of
these resulted in the death of two persons and the wounding of
three others.
At around 11 a.m. on election day, unidentified men bearing
M-16 Armalite rifles opened fire on people lining up to vote at
the Tugaya Central Elementary School, killing a 19-year-old girl
and wounding a 12-year-old boy. A gunfight between supporters
of former mayor Mangawan Balindong and reelectionist mayor
Alimatar Guro-Alim, both frontrunners for the top post, then
broke out. Maj. Ferdinand Cacas, head of the Philippine Army’s

Some of the 149 police trainees designated

as members of Board of Election Inpectors
for the June 3, 2010 special elections in
seven towns prepare the deployment of
Precinct Count Optical Scan machines
inside the provincial capitol gym.
The Philippine Army seaborne units
patrol Lake Lanao while the special
elections in seven towns were ongoing.

103rd Brigade Election Monitoring and Action Center (BEMAC),

said his men gathered that the strafing was perpetrated by a
certain Albert Balindong.
That afternoon, a supporter of Guro-Alim, identified as
Camar Mama, opened fire at Sadain Ayunar Sarip, a police officer,
and Saano Abdul while they were lining for ballots in Barangay
Sugod Mawatan. Both were injured.
At mid-afternoon in Kapai town, a certain Mamak Sangco
who was on his way to vote was shot to death allegedly by Kotalb
Gauraki, son of mayoral bet Kimal Gauraki. Four candidates
were running for mayor of Kapai, three of them members of the
Mangurun clan who have been locked in intense political rivalry
for the last several elections.Armed men later engaged Army
soldiers deployed in the town to quell violence, said Fr. Teresito
Suganob, head of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible
Voting (PPCRV) in Marawi.
The poll watchdog Citizens Coalition for Electoral Reforms in
the ARMM (Citizens CARE) recorded several mauling incidents
in a number of precincts in Marawi City. The contest for the
city’s top post was a toss-up between reelectionist mayor Fahad
Salic and former mayor Abbas Basman.
Citizens CARE head Salic Ibrahim said one civilian was hit in
the crossfire as two barangay chairmen in Calanogas exchanged
gunfire. The political contest in Calanogas was dominated by
members of the Benito clan, 11 of whom ran for various positions:
three for mayor, two for vice mayor and the rest for seats in the
municipal council.
Vote Peace blamed the Comelec for the rash of violence in the
ARMM, especially in Lanao del Sur. “Had Comelec declared the
province under its control much earlier, the political environment
in the area may have been different,” it said.
The election monitoring group said Comelec ran out of time
to implement Resolution No. 8887, which was issued on May 8,
just two days before the elections.
The resolution creates special task forces composed of police,
military and Comelec officials to contain violence in the whole
of ARMM, as well as the provinces of Nueva Ecija and Abra, and
several other towns. But because it was issued at the eleventh
hour, there was no time to send more military or police forces to
these critical areas, especially to the ARMM.
As it turned out, the ARMM had the most number of election-
related violent incidents during the 2010 election period.
Reduced failure rate
A
lthough violence marked the elections in Lanao
del Sur, the Comelec declared a failure of voting in only
eight towns, down from 13 in 2007. These are the towns
of Lumba-Bayabao, Masiu, Sultan Dumalondong, Lumbaca-
Unayan, Bayang, Tubaran and Marogong.
Comelec Resolution No. 8946 declared failure of elections
in Lumba-Bayabao, Masiu, Sultan Dumalondong and Tubaran
following the refusal of members of the boards of election
inspectors (BEIs) to report for duty. In Marogong and Bayang,
the threat of violence also prevented BEIs from serving in the
polls. And in Lumbaca-Unayan, political parties objected to
the deployment of nonfunctional Precinct Count Optical Scan
(PCOS) machines.
But the PPCRV said the PCOS machines in Lumba-Bayabao
and Lumbaca-Unayan failed to function when they were tested
earlier; hence, the BEIs went home before they could be deployed
to their precincts. In Masui, the BEIs also left after the municipal
election officer failed to show up. Despite the absence of voting,
the poll watchdog noted the generally tense atmosphere in these
towns.
In the towns where voting was declared a failure, the elections
had become a mad scramble for local power among several
candidates, and in some towns, family members were fighting
each other for elective positions.
n From only a partial failure, the Comelec declared in August the
entire poll in Tugaya a total failure. One was killed and three others

wounded because of election day violence there.

n In Lumba-Bayabao, five candidates ran for mayor, three of them
relatives: Gambai Rasuman Dagalangit, Macloc Dagalangit and

Abraham Rasuman.
n In Masiu, five bets were vying to be mayor, although the contest
was largely between Nasser Pangandaman Jr., son of former

agrarian reform secretary Nasser Sr., and Aminullah Arimao.
n Sultan Dumalondong’s reelectionist mayor Lumna Kurangking
was facing 10 opponents for the town’s top post.

n In Lumbaca-Unayan, seven bets ran for mayor, four of them
related: Casim Guro, Itomama Guro, Omira Guro and Macaurog

Guro Maunting.
n The Bayang mayoral post was a contest between relatives
Sahroden Papandayan Ampatua and Jamael Papandayan Balt

Magangcong, and McMillan Lucman.
n In Tubaran, the mayoralty was contested by Maimona Balt-
Decampong, Rafael Dimaporo and Raida Dimaporo Papandayan.

n Four bets locked horns for the mayoralty of Marogong, two of
whom were relatives Haroun Maruhom and Mosib Maruhom.
Balloting in several clustered precincts in seven more towns

failed, and a special poll had to be scheduled on June 3 and then
on November 13.
During the special elections in the seven towns on June 3,
one violent incident was recorded in Sultan Dumalondong town
in which two policemen who were defending a precinct cluster
from harassment by armed men were wounded.
Apart from this, relatively minor incidents like mauling
and fistfights marked the special balloting schedule in Lumba-
Bayabao.
The designation of only a few sites in each town that would
host the polling centers streamlined security efforts, and focused
attention on a smaller number of voting areas.
Changed maneuvers
E
ven as automated voting seemed more efficient and better-
guarded, violence became more intense as attempts to
manipulate the poll outcome also became largely physical.
Apart from fat bribes, the threat of or actual physical harm was
a principal component in effectively carrying out or deterring
these tricks.
Namfrel’s Dalidig noted various incidents of harassment all
over Lanao del Sur since the campaign started. These were meant
to drive away opponents from areas where they were trying to
establish a foothold or develop bailiwicks. “Marami talaga ang
nagka-girian, pero konti lang ang umabot sa banatan (There was a
lot of tension, but only a few ended up in actual violence),” he
said.
Although still hounded by a host of technical questions, the
automated election system shifted the opportunities for fraud
to the upstream phases of the electoral process, which are voter
registration and voting.
During the voter list-up, individuals not eligible to vote in
certain localities were able to register, usually upon the behest
of politicians to whom they committed political support. These
registrants were either non-residents, minors or voters already
registered in other precincts.
In Lanao del Sur in 2007, flying voters were a mix of Maranaos
and non-Maranaos who came from nearby localities like Iligan
City and Misamis Oriental towns, and as far as Ozamiz City.
According to poll monitors, politician-sponsors paid these flying
voters P1,000 each to register in Lanao del Sur, and another P50
for each of them to bribe the local Election Registration Boards to
facilitate the list-up.
In October 2009, a grenade exploded near a line of would-be
voter registrants in Marawi City, killing at least one and injuring
about 20 people. Many of the victims were from Lanao del Norte
attempting to register as voters in Lanao del Sur, some of them

still minors. Each person was reportedly brought into Marawi by

a political camp and promised a four-digit sum. The bombing was
the worst form of political violence in the province, obviously
meant to deter a pre-election maneuver that could have bearing
on the poll turnout.
With fraud ruled out in the counting and canvassing stages,
politicians and their operatives had to ensure greater influence, if
not control, over how the ballots were accomplished.
To do this, politicians innovatively rehashed old tricks to suit
the new conditions. Even then, the usual tricks of vote-buying,
flying voters and voter-herding continued to be very useful and
proved to be an enduring feature of elections in the province.
What was unique with May 10 was that the voter lines
became a major battleground for gaining control of the balloting
process. The clustering of regular precincts made the queue of
voters longer than usual.
The common maneuvers employed resembled those in battle.
One was the filling up of voter lines with supporters, which meant
outdoing a rival camp in taking priority positions in the long
queue for ballots. Voters whose patience easily wore thin gave up
the chance to cast a ballot, losing out a vote for a particular bet.
A corollary maneuver was the staging of violence as a
diversionary tactic to break a long queue of rival supporters,
making the voters disperse and disrupting the line. As election
day incidents showed, this tactic ranged from the seriously life-
threatening to the outright funny or merely distracting.
An example of this were the two explosions in Marawi—the
explosion of a worn-down black Isuzu Highlander vehicle parked
near a polling center and of another improvised explosive device
in an empty lot in Barangay Saduc mid-morning of May 10. No
person was wounded in the incidents which Citizens CARE’s
Ibrahim said were merely done “to harass voters and disrupt the
conduct of the elections.”
Incidents of indiscriminate shooting were also related to the
scuffle to control the voter lines, as experienced in Tugaya and
Kapai on May 10 and in Sultan Dumalondong on June 3.
A method with relatively low-key physical violence that was
used was the fistfight, which erupted either among hostile or
friendly forces. A staged fistfight in Lilud-Saduc dispersed a queue
of voters identified with a mayoral bet. The exchange of punches
ended as soon as the supporters of another mayoral bet replaced
them in the line for ballots.
These maneuvers are geared at having one’s “voting forces”
fill the ballots themselves. But as Lanao del Sur’s experience
showed, it did not necessarily require a long queue of voters to
get it done.
The pre-shaded ballots for mayor and governor distributed
in polling centers controlled by men under Marawi City
reelectionist mayor Fahad Salic are an example. Expectedly,
armed intimidation was employed on BEI members, traditionally
softened by “financial incentives” for being “cooperative,” to
accept and validate ballots they knew had been pre-shaded.
Favor from Yusoph?
S
alic had apparently gone higher than the election
inspectors in his quest for reelection. Several political
camps say it was Salic who asked Comelec Commissioner
Yusoph for the “last-minute issuance” of an order redrawing the
clustering of several precincts in Marawi City that eventually
favored him.
The “favor” came in the form of reduced security focus and
therefore greater leeway in terms of physically controlling the
balloting process in the affected precincts.
For the automated election, the Comelec had clustered the regular
precincts to be served by a PCOS machine. In the case of Lanao del Sur,
one cluster usually comprised four to five regular precincts.
In several barangays in Marawi City, the polling center for
every cluster was set at the MSU gym amid a very tight security
cordon provided by the Philippine Army and Philippine National
Police (PNP).
MSU sources said the gym’s floor area was divided and space

Twenty-two-year -old Nuraldin

Yusoph, son of Election
Commissioner Elias Yusoph, is
released after 29 days of captivity.
allocated for each clustered precincts it was to host in preparation
for the balloting exercise, with ropes used as barriers.
The setup was just like any precinct housed in the classrooms
except that the specific balloting centers were not enclosed; the
proceedings could be openly observed even from the fringes.
On the eve of the scheduled May 10 balloting, the Comelec
issued an order that had the effect of breaking up the centralized
polling center at the MSU gym and transferring these to the
classrooms, farther from the public eye.
Military sources said that as if to justify the transfer on
grounds of security, a grenade and two improvised explosive
devices were blasted near the gym just before balloting supposedly
opened at 7 a.m. No one was injured.
After checking on the blasts, Major Cacas said the devices
were made only to create a loud explosion but not to harm. “It
was like a firecracker but with a far more powerful explosion
capacity,” he said.
In the new locations of the clustered precincts, security forces
and the general public could no longer observe the proceedings.
The police were only allowed several meters away from the polling
center.
There, witnesses say, Salic’s henchmen overpowered the
BEIs. Many voters who were interviewed by reporters complained
the ballots given them already contained shades for mayor and
governor.
Reporters also discovered a precinct cluster where the line of
voters had not moved and people inside the polling center were
the only ones shading the ballots.
Eventually, Salic garnered a landslide victory in these clustered
precincts and went on to win the mayoral race.
‘Ground capture’ and other tactics
T
he favor Salic earned from Yusoph can also be considered
“ground capture.” Other comparable situations were those
in which polling centers were set up in areas where one

party had a standing rido or clan war, making it difficult for them
to cast their ballots because of the likelihood of being harmed.
But the traditional violence continues to be a feature of
the improved security landscape of Lanao del Sur’s polls. On
September 10, former Tugaya mayor Alimatar Guro-Alim was
killed in an ambush in Barangay Dilimbayan as he was traveling
toward a mosque for Eid’l Fitr prayers.
Authorities have eyed political rivalry as the likely motive for
the attack. Guro-Alim stood for reelection on May 10, closely
contested by former mayor Mangawan Balindong.
Both their supporters clashed on election day, resulting in
the partial failure of balloting in several of the town’s clustered
precincts. The Comelec later decided to nullify the polls in the
entire town.
The ambush of Guro-Alim came nearly two months before
the November 13 special election scheduled for Tugaya and seven
other towns where a partial balloting failure was declared during
the May 10 elections.

Phantom of the polls
E
ven as most political camps tried to outdo each other
with warlike maneuvers, electoral ghouls were still making
themselves felt.
Election results transmitted to Comelec central server after
the May 10 polls include those from nine “ghost” precincts in
Lanao del Sur. The results from the phantom precincts, which
can be viewed at the Comelec’s election results website, www.
ibanangayon.ph, show a voter turnout of 69 percent or 893 of
1,283 supposed registered voters.
The nine precincts are all in Madalum town which Comelec’s
ARMM assistant regional director Renault Macarambon
confirmed to be non-existent. They are among the 43 precincts
that surveyors of Smartmatic, supplier of the PCOS machines
in the 2010 elections, could not locate in four Lanao del Sur
towns—Madalum, Balabagan, Tagoloan and Maguing—before
the elections. The survey was conducted to test the possibility of
transmitting precinct-level results at the close of balloting
When Smartmatic brought the matter to the attention of
Comelec, the poll body sent an investigative team to the areas.
In Madalum town, probers were unable to locate seven
precincts: Basak Primary School, Lilitun Madrasah School, Punud
Elemeraty School, Riray Primary School, Udangun Primary School,
Racotan Primary School and Bacayawan Elementary School.
Residents told probers they were not aware of the existence of
these precincts, according to a Newsbreak report on the findings
of the investigation.
Of the other two precincts, the Gurain Primary School has
been turned into a house while the Padian Torogan Madrasah
School has been abandoned.
Based on the Comelec project of precincts, Bacayawan covers
clustered precincts 4a and 4B; Basak, 6A; Gurain, 16A; Lilitun,
23A; Padian Torogan, 26A; Punud, 29A; Racotan, 31A; Riray,
32A, and Udangun, 41A.
Administration bets dominate
T
he results in the nine phantom precincts showed that
ghost voters went for administration bets in the local
contests.
Of the 893 votes supposedly cast, Lakas-Kampi mayoral bet
Usman Sarangani Jr. garnered 808, and reelectionist governor
Mamintal Adiong Jr. got 705.
Reelectionist second district Rep. Pangalian Balindong of
Lakas-Kampi led the race with 599 votes against former Rep.
Benasing Macarambon of the Nacionalista Party who got 199.
In the presidential race, Senator Benigno Aquino III led the
tally with 328 votes, former Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro
with 285 and Senator Manuel Villar with 161.
The vice presidential race in the ghost precincts was a toss-
up between Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay and Senator Loren
Legarda, although the latter was a poor second in the tallies.

Binay cornered 576 votes against Legarda’s 138. Senator Manuel

Roxas, who expected to win the vice presidential race with a slim
margin, only got 10 votes.
The Coconut Farmers Association of Linamon, Lanao del
Norte Inc. (COFA) dominated the party-list race, cornering 456
votes; Biyayang Bukid, 25; Ang Laban ng Indiginong Filipino
(ALIF), 21, and Action for Dynamic Development Inc., (ADD)
22.

Ghost in 1998
O
ne of the nine ghost precincts is located in a barangay
named Padian Torogan, which means cemetery in
Maranao. The Comelec had declared the precinct non-
existent as far back as June 29, 1998.
Former Madalum mayor Sultan Usman Sarangani, incumbent
mayor Soraida M. Sarangani and incumbent vice mayor Hadji
Nor Hassan, however, had appealed the ruling and even brought
the matter to the Supreme Court which sustained the Comelec
two years later.
The Comelec based its ruling on the results of an ocular
inspection its personnel jointly conducted with the Department
of Interior and Local Government on June 18, 1998. The team
found only two structures in the area—a concrete house with no
roof and another wooden structure without walls and a roof.
“This obviously means that no single human being could
possibly reside in these two structures,” said the ocular inspection
report.
Back then, no person in the area also claimed to be a resident
or a registered voter of Barangay Padian Torogan.
Election Watchlist Areas in Lanao del Sur
1 Marawi City 27 Mulondo
2 Bacolod-Kalawi (Bacolod-Grande) 28 Pagayawan
3 Balabagan 29 Piagapo
4 Balindong (WATO) 30 Poona Bayabao (Gata)
5 Bayang 31 Pualas
6 Binidayan 32 Saguiaran
7 Buadiposo-Buntong 33 Sultan Dumalondong
8 Bubong 34 Picong (Sultan Gumander)
9 Bumbaran 35 Tagoloan II
10 Butig 36 Tamparan
11 Calanogas 37 Taraka
12 Ditsaan-Ramain 38 Tubaran
13 Ganassi 39 Tugaya
14 Kapai 40 Wao
15 Kapatagan
16 Lumba-Bayabao
17 Lumbaca-Unayan
18 Lumbatan
19 Lumbayanague
20 Madalum
21 Madamba (Uya-an)
22 Maguing
23 Malabang
24 Marantao
25 Marogong
26 Masiu

Police man a checkpoint on a highway in Tacloban City.
Photo by Ven Labro

EASTERN
VISAYAS
No stopping ‘guns,
goons and gold’
By Ven Labro
& Reyan Arinto
I
t was the eve of the May 10, 2010 elections, and most
residents of Barangay Balud in Sta. Margarita town in
Samar were already in bed, hoping to cast their votes early
the following morning.
Suddenly, a burst of gunfire shattered the stillness of the
night. Two men, riding tandem on a motorcycle, were fired upon
by a group of men on a van and killed on the spot.
Rodrigo de la Peña and David Casaljay—the police could
not ascertain their ages and addresses because they bore no
identification cards—were, according to a military information
officer, members of a private armed group of a local politician
while the killers belonged to another armed group maintained by
a rival.
Ven Labro and Reyan Arinto community journalists and correspondents of national
broadsheets. Labro has been writing for over 20 years and is currently editor of a
regional daily, while Arinto has been a correspondent of the same paper for more
than a decade now.
Word was De la Peña and Casaljay were on their way to
deliver an undisclosed sum to their political leaders in Calbayog
City, who were to use it to buy votes. But the rival politician, who
had gotten wind of the plan, sent his goons to intercept them.
The police report, however, made no mention of any money
recovered by responding law enforcers.
The killing in Sta. Margarita attests to the escalation of
political rivalries in the region where several clans have held
sway for decades. Despite automated counting and canvassing,
which were supposed to make fraud nearly impossible, politicians
continued to use “guns, goons and gold” in the elections.
The police reported the May 9 incident as the first case of
election-related violence for the 2010 election season in Eastern
Visayas, a region of six provinces that count among the country’s
most impoverished.
Also known as Region 8, Eastern Visayas is composed mainly
of Samar, the country’s third largest island, and Leyte, the seventh
largest, with the San Juanico Strait separating the two. The region
also has several minor islands, among them the island province
of Biliran. Leyte Island is divided into Leyte and Southern Leyte
provinces while Samar Island comprises the provinces of Samar,
Eastern Samar and Northern Samar.
The region is located in the eastern central part of the
Philippines. The San Bernardino Strait separates it from Luzon,
the Surigao Strait from northeastern Mindanao, and the Visayan
and Camotes Seas from the rest of the Visayas.
As of 2007, the population of Eastern Visayas stood close to
four million, most of them Waray-Warays, the country’s fourth
largest cultural linguistic group. But Cebuanos also inhabit
Ormoc City, western and southwest Leyte, and western Samar.
The inhabitants are mostly fishermen or farmers; many grow rice,
abaca, corn, coconut, sugarcane and banana are major crops.
The terrain of the region’s two large islands is markedly
different. Leyte has a high peaked mountain mass in the interior
while Samar has low rugged hills interspersed with valleys. More
than half of its 21,431-square-kilometer-land area is forestland

EASTERN VISAYAS: No stopping ‘guns, goons and gold’
SAMAR ISLAND LEYTE ISLAND

Samar Leyte
Congressional districts 2 Congressional districts 5
Municipalities 25 Cities 2
City 1 Municipalities 41
Barangays 952 Barangays 1,641
Eastern Samar Southern Leyte
Congressional district 1 Congressional district 1
Municipalities 23 City 1
Barangays 597 Municipalities 18
Northern Samar Barangays 471
Congressional districts 2 Biliran
Municipalities 24 Congressional district 1
Barangays 569 Municipalities 8
Barangays 132
and the remaining alienable and disposable land.

Its geographical location and climate partly explain why
poverty prevails in Eastern Visayas—the eastern part is frequently
visited by storms from the Pacific Ocean, and the whole region
itself receives heavy rainfall throughout the year with no
pronounced dry season to speak of.
Before 1965, Samar Island was just one province with
Catbalogan as its capital. In June that year, Congress passed
Republic Act 4221 which cut up the island into three provinces:
Northern Samar with Catarman as capital, Eastern Samar with
Borongan as capital, and Western Samar (now officially known
as Samar) retaining Catbalogan as capital.
Leyte was also just one province until R.A. 2227 was signed
into law in 1959, creating the province of Southern Leyte, which
was inaugurated on July 1, 1960. It initially had 16 towns under
it, but three more were subsequently created.
The small island of Biliran, which also once belonged to
Leyte, became an independent province in 1992.
A storied past
E
astern Visayas has played a significant role in the
country’s history. It was on Homonhon Island on March
16, 1521 that the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan,
sailing under the Spanish flag, first set foot on Philippine soil.
The event was known as the “discovery” of the Philippines.
In the town of Palapag in Northern Samar, Juan Ponce de
Sumuroy led a rebellion against the Spaniards, which became
known as the Sumoroy Rebellion that lasted from 1649 to 1650.
The rebellion spread like wildfire to other provinces in the Visayas
and Mindanao.
It was also during the Spanish era that galleons called
at a church on the fortified island of Capul, now an island
municipality of Northern Samar, to offer thanks for safe passage
across the Pacific Ocean. The galleons would then proceed to
Manila, their final destination. Capul was also the last stop
on Philippine soil of departing galleons before the long, often
treacherous trans-Pacific journey to Acapulco in Mexico. Capul
reportedly got its name from Acapulco where the galleons set sail
from the Philippines.
During the Philippine-American War in the early 1900s,
American forces suffered a major defeat in Balangiga, now a town
of Eastern Samar. Local revolutionaries, some clad in women’s
clothing and many armed only with long bladed weapons and
spears, attacked and almost wiped out an American garrison on
September 28, 1901.
In retaliation, the Americans turned Samar island into what
one official called a “howling wilderness,” killing men, women
and even children aged 10 and above. They then took away the
church bells of Balangiga, which are still in American hands.
Several attempts to retrieve the missing bells proved futile.
But in the 1940s, the people of Balangiga were fighting
alongside Americans against Japanese invaders. It was, however,
in Leyte where the big battle took place. On October 20, 1944

the Allied Forces led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed on

the beaches of Leyte. This signaled the start of the campaign to
liberate the Philippines from Japanese forces.
Political dynasties
A
fter the war, the nation started rebuilding itself. New
political leaders cropped up, with some of them starting
to put up political dynasties. However, clan rivalries have
led to election-related violence as many tried to hang on to power
for the money, prestige and connections it brings them.
Among the prominent political families in Eastern Visayas in
the pre-martial law years were the Velosos and Romualdezes in
Leyte and the Rosaleses, Gomezes, Avelinos, Del Valles and Dazas
in Samar.
None, however, were as powerful or as prominent as the
Romualdez clan of Leyte, whose daughter Imelda gained national
fame and clout after marrying then Ilocos Norte congressman
Ferdinand Marcos in the 1950s, sharing power with him during
his 21-year rule.
But even before Imelda, the Romualdezes were already a clan
to reckon with. Her uncle Norberto was a legislator and associate
justice of the Supreme Court during the Commonwealth years
while cousin Daniel was Leyte congressman and later Speaker of
the House from 1957 to 1962.
Years after the Marcoses were ousted from power, Imelda ran
and won a seat representing the first district of Leyte, a post held
now by her nephew Alfred. (Imelda was again elected to Congress
in 2010, this time, though, representing the second district of
Ilocos Norte.)
During the martial law years, the Velosos, Roños and
Ricaldes were the foremost political families of Eastern Visayas.
Jose Roño was the minister of interior and member of parliament
representing Samar.
The post-EDSA era, however, has witnessed the emergence of
new political clans, some of them also related to old politicians.
Many of Eastern Visayas’ politicos have been in power for
some time now, passing on their positions to their children and
other members of their family. In fact, the region’s roster of
local executives and legislators is an intricate web of kinship ties
illustrating how political dynasties are gaining strength.
For instance, Milagrosa Tan of Samar, who served for one
term as provincial board member and three terms as governor,
won as congresswoman of Samar’s second district in the May
2010 polls. Her daughter, Sharee Ann Tan-De Los Santos, was a
congresswoman for one term and is now the neophyte governor
of Samar. Sharee Ann’s brother, Stephen James, is her vice
governor.
In Catbalogan, Mayor Coefredo Uy was reelected mayor while
his daughter Stephany was reelected councilor. Stephany is the
wife of Stephen James Tan.
In Calbayog City, Rep. Reynaldo Uy, who served three terms
as mayor and another three terms as congressman of Samar’s
first district, was elected to his old post as mayor. His son won a
seat in the city council.
Uy was allied under the Liberal Party with three-term Calbayog
Mayor Mel Senen Sarmento, who ran and won the congressional race
in the first district while his political archrival Milagrosa Tan linked up
with former Rep. Rodolfo Tuazon, who ran but lost the congressional
race in two successive elections. Uy, Sarmiento and Tan were avid
supporters of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
In Northern Samar, Raul Daza, who served as congressman
before the martial law years and as governor for three terms,
is back in his old seat as representative of the first district. His
son Paul, who served for one term as congressman, won the
governorship, replacing his father.
In Leyte’s second district, Sergio Apostol, who was a
congressman for three terms, reclaimed his seat. Apostol gained
national fame for having been a member of the prosecution panel
in the impeachment trial of former president Joseph Estrada. He
was also Arroyo’s presidential legal adviser.
Apostol’s wife Trinidad, who once served as Leyte vice

governor and congresswoman, is now mayor of Carigara town,

a post once held by their daughter Anlie, now a member of the
provincial board.
In the fifth district of Leyte, Rep. Carmen Cari, a three-term
mayor and three-term congresswoman, regained her old post as
mayor. Her son Michael, a three-term mayor of Baybay, is her
vice mayor. Another son, Jose Carlos, a former three-term mayor
of Baybay, won his bid for a seat in Congress unopposed.
In the fourth district of Leyte, former Rep. Eufrocino Codilla’s
son was reelected for a third term as mayor of Ormoc City while
another son was reelected mayor of nearby Kananga town. But
political newcomer Lucy Torres-Gomez defeated his son Eufrocino
Jr. in his bid to replace his father as congressman.
In Tacloban City, Mayor Alfred Romualdez was reelected
while his wife Cristina was reelected councilor. But his father,
former Tacloban City Mayor Alfredo “Bejo” Romualdez, lost in
the vice mayoral race.
Former Assemblyman Gerardo Espina Sr., former congressman
of Biliran and mayor of the capital town of Naval, is now mayor of
Kawayan town, with his son, Rodolfo, three-term mayor of Kawayan
mayor, as his vice mayor. Another son, Roger, a three-term governor
of Biliran, is now congressman of Biliran, and son Gerardo Jr., a
former congressman, is the new governor of Biliran.
In Southern Leyte, Rep. Roger Mercado, who made a
comeback after serving three terms in Congress until 1998, has
been reelected for another term as congressman. His brother
Damian, a former three-term mayor of Maasin City, has been
reelected for a second term as governor.
There are many more political clans in the smaller towns.
Why dynasties endure
P
olitical clans persist when democracy is not stable
or the government is “weak,” said Ladylyn Mangada-
Lim, a political science professor of the University of the
Philippines Visayas’ (UPV) Tacloban campus.
The situation demonstrates government’s inability to provide
basic services or failure to give comfort to the people, who then
turn to politicians for their needs, including financial assistance
for expenses ranging from weddings, baptisms, funerals and
fiestas to tuition fees for their children and transportation fares.
This relationship makes people indebted to the politicians, who
replace government as the provider of people’s needs.
“The issue is about the absence of government (from) the
personal lives of the people,” Mangada-Lim said.
Political dynasties persist also because politicians need to be
entrenched to protect their interests, the political scientist said.
To stay in power, politicians need to raise money, arm themselves,
or even maintain a private armed group. “They have to invest,”
said Mangada-Lim, adding that a number of politicians in Leyte
and Samar are no exception.
In the 2010 elections, the Philippine National Police (PNP)
placed 54 towns in Eastern Visayas on the election watch list,
among them 21 towns in Samar province, including Gandara
town and Calbayog City. Six towns in Leyte, one in Southern
Leyte, eight in Eastern Samar and 17 in Northern Samar also
made the list.
In Leyte, five towns were identified as “immediate areas of
concern”: Tabon-tabon in the second district, Calubian in the
third, Kananga and Palompon in the fourth and Mahaplag in the
fifth.
Places are considered areas of concern when there is presence
of threat groups, a history of intense political rivalry, recorded
cases of election-related violent incidents in previous elections,
and the existence of active partisan armed groups, explained Senior
Superintendent Manuel Cubillo, PNP Region 8 spokesman.
Areas were categorized according to threat level for purposes
of strategic security planning and deployment of troops and
resources for election security operations, he added.
However, some of these areas of concern were not divulged to
prevent the public from undue fear, Cubillo said.
The police confirmed reports of irregularities, fraud and

violence in Biliran province, but no cases were filed against

violators of election laws.
Before the 2010 elections, the police tried to “neutralize”
some private armed groups (PAGs) in Eastern Visayas, particularly
in the Samar area where intense political rivalries have spawned
PAGs. But the police reported that three out of five armed groups
in Samar were eventually “neutralized.”
“For Samar, during the previous elections we gave special
concern to the area because there were identified private armed
groups responsible for the politically motivated killings,” Chief
Superintendent Arnold M. Revilla, PNP 8 regional director, told
journalists.
The private armed groups, he said, are being maintained
by local government officials who were elected during the last
elections.
However, he would not name names, saying operations
against as well as negotiations with these groups were ongoing
in a bid to neutralize them before the barangay and Sangguniang
Kabataan (SK) elections. (The barangay and SK elections were
held in October.)
The Happy Valley raid
I
n late February, slightly more than two months before the
synchronized national and local elections, the police raided
three barangays in the outskirts of Calbayog City collectively
known as Happy Valley. A Philippine Information Agency report
quoted the police as saying 20 armed men alleged to be members
of the Terga armed group operating in Calbayog City were
arrested.
The police also reported having confiscated a veritable armory
from Happy Valley—seven short guns, four M-16 Armalite
rifles, two .45-caliber pistols, one Ingram machine pistol, one
.357-caliber revolver, three .38-caliber revolver, one .32-caliber
Magnum, 18 improvised shotguns and five magazine-fed shotgun,
one KG9 submachine gun, five .22-caliber rifles, three airguns,
five magazines for M-16, three magazines for .45-caliber pistols
and assorted ammunition.
Michael Terga, an alleged hired gun said to be the group’s
leader, was killed in the raid, according to the police.
A number of policemen who participated in the raid were later
awarded the Medalya ng Kagitingan (Medal of Valor) in a simple
ceremony at Camp Kangleon, the PNP regional headquarters.
The police regional director then, Chief Superintendent Rey
Lañada, said the incident was their biggest feat in their campaign
against private armed groups.
In a privilege speech in Congress, Uy charged that the Terga
group was hired by his “political adversaries.” But there were reports
that then governor Milagrosa Tan, one of Uy’s adversaries, had
supported the PNP’s efforts to dismantle private armed groups,
particularly in Samar’s first district which included Calbayog City.
One report, however, said residents of one of the villages in
Happy Valley believed that the raid on February 20 was nothing
more than a violent political revenge by one group of politicians
against another, supposedly in the name of peaceful elections.
Residents, the report said, accused members of the raiding
party of firing their weapons indiscriminately into the air and
into the houses, breaking down walls and forcing sleeping
villagers out of their homes. They also alleged that the raiders
wore bonnets to hide their identities.
The raid, they insisted, was not really part of the campaign
against private armies but part of the political rivalry between the
politicians belonging to the Liberal Party (LP) and the Nacionalista
Party (NP). Uy and Sarmiento were known stalwarts of the LP
while Tuazon and the Tans were with the NP.
Lañada also reported at the time that the PNP was able to
dismantle earlier the Moloboco private armed group, which was
allegedly under the control of a mayor in Samar. The group’s
leader was arrested in the house of Mayor Antonieto Cabueños
of Gandara town, according to the police. The mayor, however,
said the suspect was at his house because he was his political
supporter.

Mayor Antonieto Cabueños of Gandara,

Samar is escorted by policemen to the
police station after his arrest for alleged
violation of the Omnibus Election Code.
Photo by Ven Labro
The bullet hole on the wall is a stark
reminder to residents of Happy
Valley of the February 20, 2010 raid.
Photo by Dean M. Bernardo

Comelec regional office personnel load

Precinct Count Optical Scan machines for
distribution to different places in Eastern
Visayas. Photo by Ven Labro
Lañada had cited the intense rivalry among candidates
in Samar and the presence of private armed groups allegedly
maintained by some politicians as reasons authorities feared
there would be a high incidence of election-related violence in
the province.
On top of their efforts to dismantle private armed groups,
the police also established 90 checkpoints in strategic places in
the region that resulted in the arrest of 177 persons for violation
of the election gun ban and the confiscation of nearly 200
firearms.
More policemen were also fielded in Samar. They numbered
580, including 400 in violence-prone Calbayog City.
The Gandara graveyard?
I
n the afternoon of August 18, or three months after the
elections, Gandara Mayor Cabueños was apprehended at
a police checkpoint in Sta. Margarita on the strength of a
warrant of arrest issued by Judge Manuel Torrevillas Jr. of the
Northern Samar Regional Trial Court. He was released hours
later after posting an P80,000 bail.
It was not the first time Cabueños was arrested. A known
political ally of then Representative Uy, he was apprehended on
February 2, 2010 at a police checkpoint in Lavezares, Northern
Samar for alleged violation of the Omnibus Election Code.
Arrested along with Cabueños were three policemen who were
unauthorized to be his escorts. Police Officers Jonathan Rama,
Edgar Delector and Perfecto Merilles, all of the Gandara Police
Station, are under the custody of the PNP regional office.
The police dubbed Cabueños as the “maintener of the
Moloboco Group, believed to be behind a series of politically
motivated killings in Calbayog City and nearby municipalities.”
“Calbayog City and Gandara, Samar came into prominence
due to the series of purported political killings and forced
disappearances allegedly under the orders of Mayor Cabueños
and his political allies to the so-called partisan armed group,”

said a press release of the police.

Since 2004, Cabueños has been linked to a number of killings
in the villages of Gandara, a town nestled along the national
highway and about 30 kilometers away from Calbayog City. He
has denied the accusations.
The police have exhumed several bodies in a village of
Gandara, supposedly killed by members of a private armed group
on orders of a local politician.
The PNP regional office has recorded at least 39 politically
related killings in Calbayog City and Gandara, both located in
the first congressional district of Samar, in the last three years.
Supporters of the Nacionalista Party claimed that most of the
victims were party followers.
From January to July 2009 alone, at least 35 shooting
incidents occurred in Calbayog City, leaving 28 people dead. Only
seven cases have been resolved as the perpetrators were mostly
unidentified or at large. This prompted the Diocese of Calbayog
to issue in July that year a statement strongly condemning the
series of killings.
Police officials disclosed in a forum that at least eight known
private armies were operating in the whole Samar province and
at least three have been dismantled.
The Independent Commission against Private Armies
(ICAPA), created by the Arroyo administration in the aftermath
of the November 23, 2009 massacre in Maguindanao province,
also confirmed the presence of private armies under the employ
of politicians and families in Samar.
In late April, in the runup to the elections, members of the
Armed Forces of the Philippines raided Uy’s home in Barangay
Rawis and confiscated several unregistered firearms and a grenade.
Uy, however, denied staying in that house and condemned the
raid done by the military.
ICAPA members lamented that despite the commission’s sincere
intentions to dismantle private armies in Eastern Visayas before the
May 2010 national elections, there was simply not enough time to
do so. Political leaders of the region also refused to cooperate, it said.
Earlier, the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines criticized
the Arroyo administration for paying lip service to dismantling
private armies and stopping election violence.
Ka Vicente Magbuhat, spokesperson of the party’s Arnulfo
Ortiz Command, said in a press release in December 2009,
“The reality is that these private armies are often composed
of paramilitaries from the Civilian Volunteer Organization
(CVO) and Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU).
Additionally, there are criminal elements involved—although
more often than not, criminals and CVO/CAFGU are one and
the same. There are also regular police and military elements who
are hired by certain politicians.”
He identified the areas in the province where he said
politicians maintain private armies: Calbayog City, Catbalogan,
Daram, Gandara and San Jose de Buan.
Said Magbuhat: “In fact, there has been a furor over election-
related bloodshed in Calbayog City. In Daram Island, the
politicians in power maintain a private army composed of CVO/
CAFGU and criminal elements recruited from other towns and
provinces. In Catbalogan, criminal and military elements are in
the pay of those in power. In Gandara, the private armies are
mainly plain criminals. And in San Jose de Buan, the incumbent
is running a private army composed of the CVO/CAFGU.”

Tense campaign:
Before elections and beyond
O
n May 9, 2010, a day before the elections, a private
armed group led by Ramil Artoza, who was identified
with reelectionist Mayor Rolando Celebre, was
reported to be harassing supporters of mayoral candidate Floro
Katangkatang Sr. in Barangay San Javier in Jaro, Leyte.
The PNP monitoring group led by Leyte provincial director
Superintendent John Sosito were able to contain the tension, but
it did not file a case against Artoza’s group in the absence of a

formal complaint lodged before the police.

Four days before elections, supporters of Board Member
Simeon Ongbit Jr. in Leyte’s second district were holding a
campaign rally in Barangay San Roque, Tunga when a single
gunshot believed to have originated from a powerful firearm was
heard.
The Tunga PNP immediately responded to the incident and
found a hole believed bored by a bullet on the concrete wall of the
house of engineer Landerico Yazar. Unable to determine the kind
of firearm and the identity of the gunman, the Tunga PNP sought
the assistance of the PNP Crime Laboratory at Camp Ruperto
Kangleon in Palo, Leyte. The bullet came from an M-16 rifle.
Ongbit believes the incident was politically motivated and
either he or his wife, who was running for mayor in Tunga town,
was the target. The case remains unsolved.
Politicians with private armed groups and loose firearms
have been blamed for election-related killings. But the killings do
not occur only during the election campaign period; they extend
beyond the election calendar, especially if the target is perceived
to be a threat to the political plan of a politician. And most often
the wife or a relative would run and win because of sympathy
votes.
Take the case of former Biliran governor Danilo Parilla,
who was believed planning to run for his old post in the May
2010 elections. He was gunned down while disembarking a ship
in Cebu City early in the morning of September 18, 2006. His
family claimed that the killing was politically motivated. His wife
won a second term as mayor of the capital town of Naval.
Other incidents of political violence claimed the lives of
incumbent or former officials:
n Mayor Anieto Olaje of Tarangnan, Samar, who was on his third
term as mayor, was shot dead inside a canteen at the Ipao cockfight
arena in Calbayog City on February 28, 2004.
n Francisco Montero, the elected vice mayor who replaced the
murdered Olaje as mayor of Tarangnan, was gunned down in
Catbalogan on April 3, 2004.
n Mayor Benito Astorga of the island municipality of Daram, Samar
was felled by an assasin’s bullet during a fiesta dance in Barangay

Birawan on January 24, 2007. His wife replaced him. She won a
second term as Daram mayor in May 2010.
n Mayor Carlos Dela Cruz of Matuguinao, Samar was assassinated
outside his residence in Catbalogan in July 2009. His sister ran and
won as mayor in the most recent polls.
n Three-term Mayor Mateo Biong was gunned down on July 13,
2010 in Barangay Coticot, about a kilometer from the town proper

of Giporlos in Eastern Samar. It was the first incident of political
violence in the region after the elections. The New People’s
Army has owned the killing, but his family said it was politically
motivated. Biong’s son Mark had run and won as mayor of the fifth-
class town in May 2010.
There were also reports of massive vote-buying and the

proliferation of fake bills in some places during the elections.
A day after the May 10 elections, tension gripped Biliran
as thousands of supporters of Glenn Chong, who lost his bid
to be reelected to Congress, accused his political rival, Rogelio
Espina, of electoral fraud. At least one supporter of the losing
congressional candidate was shot and injured during the rally,
which lasted for two days. Chong has filed a protest with House
of Representatives Electoral Tribunal.
The special election in one barangay in Pagsanghan town in
Samar on June 3 was also marred by allegations of vote-buying.
Supporters of some politicians reportedly dangled sums ranging
from P10,000 to P20,000. The special poll was crucial because
the results would determine the outcome of the local election,
including the mayoral race. Fortunately, no untoward incident
was reported.
In Jipapad, a mountain town of Eastern Samar, votes were
bought for P2,500 to P7,000, a source who refused to be named
said. In most towns and cities in the region, the price of a vote
ranged from P20 to P500.

But the Commission on Elections (Comelec) seemed helpless to

stop vote-buying. Comelec officials have repeatedly blamed the absence
of formal complaints from the public as reason for their inaction.
“We cannot conduct a house-to-house investigation just
to ask people if they received such (amount of money),” said
Comelec regional director Jose Nick Mendros.
UPV’s Mangada-Lim observed that aside from the normal
incidents of vote-buying and harassment, candidates were
apparently still finding ways to cheat in an automated setting.
But, she said, cases of vote-buying cannot be treated simply as
isolated and must be addressed accordingly to safeguard the
integrity of the ballot.
Mangada-Lim suggested an intensified voter education
campaign to enlighten people on the consequence of vote-buying.
This is best handled by the Church, which can better explain the
moral issues behind vote-buying, she said.
The political science professor readily acknowledged, though,
that the 2010 elections were less violent compared to the 2007
synchronized national and local elections, and credited this to the
new system of voting. In the case of Leyte and Biliran provinces,
political opponents are not as hostile to each other as they are
in the three Samar provinces where elections are always hotly
contested, she said.
Despite the killings, vote-buying and claims of electoral
fraud, the police, Army and the Comelec declared the May 10,
2010 elections in the region as “generally peaceful.”
Mendros said incidents of election-related violence, including
killings, were far more numerous in the 2004 and 2007 elections.
Authorities, including the Comelec regional director, attributed
the success of the 2010 elections to police visibility before and
during elections, the efforts to dismantle private armed groups
and the Comelec checkpoints that were set up in strategic places
throughout the region.
The peace covenants and voters information campaign
launched by the Church and private groups also helped in
ensuring clean and peaceful elections, they said.
Election Watchlist Areas in Samar
1 Calbayog City
2 Matuguinao
3 San Jorge
4 San Jose De Buan
5 Santa Margarita
6 Tarangan

Soldiers patrol the streets of Kulasi village in Maimbung town
on the eve of the May 10, 2010 polls. Photo by Al Jacinto

SULU
Balance of terror
By Jules L. Benitez
O
n August 5, 2010, a bomb exploded just as
passengers of a plane coming from Manila
had disembarked and were gathering at the
Zamboanga City Airport arrival area.
When it went off, the bomb was inside
the backpack of a man standing a mere two meters from one
of the passengers, Sulu Governor Abdusakur Tan. Tan sustained
minor injuries, but the man with the backpack and one other
person were killed while 24 others were wounded.
Tan, who was reelected governor of Sulu three months earlier,
believes he was the target and that his opponents were connected to
terrorist groups. “I have received intelligence reports that I would be
bombed again, in Zamboanga or Sulu or Manila. Not only bombed,
they may even use a rocket-propelled grenade,” he said.
Jules L. Benitez is a Mindanawon community journalist based in Zamboanga

City and is executive director of the nongovernment organization Mindanao
Development Fulcrum.

After examining surveillance footage and evidence, the police
concluded that the man with the backpack might have been part
of a group carrying out a hit, with Tan as the likely target. But
authorities refused to call it a suicide bombing, saying the man
did not act like he detonated the bomb and might not even have
known he was carrying one.
Still, then Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Jesus Versoza
called the bombing a “politically motivated terrorist act.”
Sulu politics has always been perceived as violent, but
differentiating between election-related violence and terrorism is
not always easy, given Sulu’s history and its people’s propensity
to use knives, guns and even bombs at the slightest provocation—
political, terroristic or otherwise. The Zamboanga incident, for
example, was believed perpetrated by Tan’s political rivals, yet
the attack was carried out in a bustling city two provinces away
and 130 kilometers from Sulu, using methods associated with
those of the terrorist Abu Sayyaf Group which roams Western
Mindanao.
Sulu has perennially been on the Commission on Elections
(Comelec) list of hotspots. The perception may be attributed to the
high-profile incidents of kidnapping and beheading perpetrated
by the Abu Sayyaf and other armed groups against foreigners and
journalists.
Yet people know that elections and political rivalry alone
do not trigger violence in Sulu, a scattering of islands in the
southern edge of the country sandwiched between the provinces
of Basilan and Tawi-Tawi. What triggers violence here, residents
and authorities alike say, is the proliferation of loose firearms
and a history of warfare and resistance that dates back more than
a century.
History of warfare
O
ne of five provinces of the Autonomous Region in
Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), Sulu lies at the center of
the Sulu Archipelago, which includes Basilan and Tawi-

SULU: Balance of terror
tawi. Islam arrived in the province nearly a millennium ago, and

the province became the seat of the powerful Sultanate of Sulu.
Its people are predominantly Tausug and Muslim.
Spanish colonizers found a well-entrenched feudal Muslim
society thriving in Sulu when they claimed the Philippines for
Spain in 1521, and were unable to subdue or conquer its people
for almost the entire length of their 377-year rule. Muslim ways
resembled those of the Moors who invaded Spain and Portugal.
Hence, the Spaniards christened them Moros.
Things changed when the American occupation began and
U.S. forces launched a brutal campaign to pacify the Muslims.
But the Moros were not ones to back down. After all, the fierce
Moros were adept at warfare and were known in that part of
the country as pirates who raided neighboring communities in
search of slaves.
Part of Philippine lore is the image of the juramentado of
Jolo, a Muslim who goes on a deadly rampage when provoked
and attacks enemies with nothing more than the kris, the Malay
sword whose blade is carved or wavy. The juramentado is said to
bind himself tightly in certain parts of the body to prevent blood
from circulating, and leaving the juramentado standing despite
fatal wounds.
American forces encountered many juramentados in the
course of pacifying Sulu, itself a vicious campaign that remains
etched in the memories of Sulu elders. In 1906, for example,
U.S. troops massacred 600 men, women and children who had
sought refuge from the pacification campaign in the crater of
an extinct volcano called Dajo in Jolo. The incident would be
repeated seven years later, when 500 residents hid in the crater of
another volcano called Bagsak.
These incidents would be called the Battles of Bud Dajo and
Bud Bagsak. To this day, Sulu residents pride themselves in being
the first Muslims to have fought the incursion of U.S. forces,
operations which were repeated in Iraq a century after Sulu.

Peace and conflict in Sulu
T
he Americans, with their superior armaments,
overpowered the people of Sulu, sealing what Moro
nationalists call the annexation of the Sultanate of Sulu
to the Philippine archipelago. From then on, Sulu province
shared the same political history and system as the rest of the
archipelago.
For the next five decades, a new generation of Tausugs lived
through a time of subdued conflict, until the 1960s.
Sali Ahalul, a 62-year-old businessman from Sulu’s capital
Jolo, is part of that generation. He remembers the time before
loose firearms and armed groups, in the early 1960s, when the
province was a safe place. “Sulu was peaceful and economically
flourishing,” Ahalul said.
He recalled that Sulu’s economy was at the time growing faster
than that of Zamboanga, currently Western Mindanao’s premier
city. In those days, air-conditioned establishments were unheard
of yet in Zamboanga, but Jolo already had air-conditioned movie
houses, restaurants and tailoring shops. Pristine Quezon beach
was just a few kilometers outside town, and pilots and flight
attendants loved staying overnight.
“We went to movie houses, would usually go home at
midnight, the movie houses’ ‘goodnight’ time, and walk home
to Patikul. I do not have memories of guns in those days,” the
businessman said.
With longing, he laments, “I have seen, lived and experienced
the peace of Sulu.”
But Ahalul’s generation did not escape the violent conflict
their forebears lived through. Things changed the year Ferdinand
Marcos first ran for the presidency when firearms began to
proliferate, the old man remembers. A certain Mayor Tiger of
Tapul town, he said, was campaigning for Marcos and promised
voters,“Kung sino man ang maka-zero sa kalaban ni Marcos sa
kanyang lugar, bibigyan ko ng carbine (Whoever can give Marcos’

opponent zero vote will receive a carbine rifle).”

It was also Marcos who was responsible for the series of
events that would lead to the resurgence of Muslim unrest and
rebellion. When he became president, he pursued the policy that
Sabah in Malaysia was part of the territorial jurisdiction of the
Sultanate of Sulu, and therefore the Philippines.
Marcos plotted to assert this claim by organizing a force
that would infiltrate and destabilize Sabah. Twenty-eight Muslim
youths from Sulu and Tawi-Tawi were recruited and trained
for this purpose on Corregidor Island on Manila Bay, but were
not informed of their mission. Once they found out their real
mission, the Muslims refused, and were in turn killed supposedly
by their superiors.
The massacre would come to be known as the “Jabidah,” the
name the commando unit was given. The massacre was tactically
used by the secessionist Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
to fuel dissent among the Moro people to further its armed
struggle against the national government. But the massacre
remains shrouded in mystery, prompting University of the
Philippines anthropologist Arnold Azurin to write in a publicized
research that there is no physical proof that the Jabidah Massacre
ever took place.
But more than the massacre, it was the marginalization of both
Muslims and Christians alike, as wealth and lands concentrated
in the hands of multinational corporations and landed elites,
that fuelled the secessionist movement. The rebellion that would
last nearly three decades traces its roots to the formation of the
MNLF in the town of Indanan in 1968, to end only with the
signing of a peace agreement in Malacañang in 1996.
Loose firearms
and election violence
‘W
ay back, politicians kidded themselves about the
elections as a contest of fooling each other, but
now, it is about killing each other!” Ahalul said.

Ahalul, who twice ran for public office in Jolo but never
won, said election violence in Sulu started when Marcos ran for
reelection in 1969, which was considered, until then, the dirtiest
as well as the costliest electoral exercise the country had ever seen.
That year put Sulu on the road to what it would later become: A
brewing cauldron of armed activity, where rebels, bandits, militias
and politicians’ goons mixed, and it would be difficult to tell one
from another, if indeed such labels mattered.
With guns on the loose, the province likewise became
notorious for its capacity to deliver controlled votes for national
candidates.
Gunshot wounds
and loose firearms
T
hrough the years, owning a gun became more important
to the people of Sulu than having food to eat. “Dito, nagtitipid
ang mga tao sa pagkain para makabili ng armas (Here, people
scrimp on food in order to save money to buy arms),” said Comelec
provincial election supervisor Vidzfar A. Julie.
It is difficult to say exactly how many loose firearms are in
the province. Authorities cite varying figures: Police officials put
the number at 1,000 as of May 2010 while military officials say
the figure is closer to 5,000.
Julie has his own way of estimating: “Outside of Jolo proper,
you count the number of houses, and that will be equivalent to
the number of loose firearms.”
An indication of the widespread use of guns in Sulu is the
fact that one of the leading causes of death in the province is
gunshot wounds, or GSW to health officials. The Sulu Integrated
Provincial Health Office’s (IPHO) emergency room and in-
patient records show GSW as the leading killer, second only to
hypertension.
Vandrazel M. Biroma, manager of the Center for
Humanitarian Dialogue that runs the Armed Violence Reduction
Initiatives (AVRI) program, said the IPHO data did not include

most deaths that result from the fighting between the MNLF,
the Armed Forces and the Abu Sayyaf. Islamic practice requires
corpses to be buried immediately, while the military brings its
casualties to Zamboanga, explaining the absence of records of
some of the casualties.
Counting these unrecorded incidents, Biroma said GSW
would definitely be the leading cause of death in Sulu.
Most crimes also go unreported. PNP statistics covering
Jolo show a low level of index crimes such as murder, homicide,
physical injury, rape, robbery, theft and carnapping. The number
of index crimes reported to the police totaled 23 in 2007, 35
in 2008 and 27 in 2009. These figures are much lower than in
Zamboanga City’s central areas where 402 crime incidents were
reported in 2008 alone.
The Comelec’s gun ban campaign appeared to be unsuccessful
in curbing the proliferation of firearms. Superintendent Elemer
Escosia, who assumed his post as PNP provincial director barely
a month when the 2010 elections were held, said the police
checkpoints recorded only three cases of illegal possession of
firearms since the start of the election period on January 10.
In addition to the problem of loose firearms, 2,030 civilians
are recognized as civilian volunteers and allowed to carry guns.
At the height of the rescue operations for the three workers
of the International Committee of the Red Cross kidnapped in
2009, the provincial government reorganized this civilian force
and called it the Civilian Emergency Force (CEF). The government
used it as a force multiplier in military operations.
Later that same year, the CEF was reorganized as the Barangay
Peacekeeping Action Team–Police Auxiliary Unit and was placed
under PNP control.
Capacity to inflict harm
O
n the eve of the May 2010 elections, Governor Tan was
confident there would be no massive election violence
in the province. He attributed this to what he called a

“balance of terror” existing among major opposing candidates.
Tan explained the concept simplistically as “both parties
having capacities to conduct the campaign peacefully.”
But Professor Hannibal Bara of the Mindanao State University
in Sulu, who holds a doctorate in Philippine bureaucracy, had
a clearer explanation. “Balance of terror,” he said, means the
candidates and their groups had “the capacity to inflict harm
on each other,” and that both parties “would think twice before
initiating a violent act against their political opponent.”
The two major political players in the province were the then
administration party Lakas-Kampi and the opposition Nationalist
People’s Coalition (NPC), both reaching out to Sulu’s 315,105
voters, spread out over 19 towns and 410 barangays.
Lakas-Kampi was powered by Tan, who had the advantage of
being the incumbent and of having been in Sulu politics for more
than two decades, first as councilor of Jolo and then congressman
of the province’s first district. Tan formed an alliance with the
clan of Abdel S. Anni, longtime political leader of Sulu, who ran
for vice governor.
The NPC, on the other hand, combined the forces of three
clans: Arbison, Sahidulla and Jikiri.
Abdulmunir M. Arbison was the NPC’s gubernatorial
candidate and campaigned with Tan’s former partymate and
then incumbent vice governor, Lady Ann Sahidulla, who sought
election as representative of the second district. Completing the
triumvirate was the former governor and congressman then,
Yusop H. Jikiri, former chief of staff of the MNLF Armed Forces,
who sought reelection as congressman of the first district.
The Loong and Tulawie clans, two political forces who used
to be in power, opted to stay neutral and fielded candidates in the
line-up of both contending parties.
Tupay Loong ran as Tan’s congressional candidate for the
first district and won. His younger brother, Ben, who was also
once a governor and who lost to Tan in previous elections, ran as
vice governor under Arbison’s wing and won as well.
On the side of the Tulawie clan, Tan supported the husband-

Ballot boxes used in Sulu during

the 2008 ARMM elections.
Photo by Al Jacinto

Sulu folk are swamped with
posters and other campaign
materials of candidates.
Photo by Jules L. Benitez

and-wife tandem of Tambrin and Sitti Raya Tulawie who ran for
and won the top posts in Talipao, Sitti Raya as reelected mayor
and her husband as vice mayor. Their son, Nebocadnizar, is an
assemblyman in the Regional Legislative Assembly of the ARMM.
Tambrin’s nephew Cocoy is identified with the Arbison clan.
Violence during the election period
T
he days preceding the May 10 elections showed that it
was not really just the top guns of political clans who had
the power to keep or upset what Tan called “the balance of
terror.” Lower ranking politicians owned firearms, even grenade
launchers, and would not hesitate to use them once provoked.
In the evening of April 26, the barangay captain of Lahi
Village in Pandami town, Hadji Isa Sitin, and his son ventured
into neighboring Barangay Parian Dakula to post campaign
materials of the mayoral candidate they were supporting. They
expected trouble, so they brought their firearms.
Seeing the two inside his domain, Parian Dakula barangay
captain Kitoh Aidani, 30, opened fire at them. Father and son
were not hit but instinctively retaliated. The incident resulted,
in police parlance, in “1KIA and 2WIA,” or “one killed in action
and two wounded in action.”
“Aidani was killed when Sitin and his son returned fire,” said
Army Maj. Bhen Sabbaha, deputy commander of the military’s
Task Force Comet 17. Sali Darul and Aidani’s son, who were not
named in the report, were wounded.
The incident was listed among the cases of election-related
violence in Sulu. It prompted Task Force Comet 17 to immediately
send a contingent of Marines to Pandami, a town on Lapak Island
south of Jolo.
Aside from Pandami, the Provincial Joint Security Control
Center (JSCC) kept close watch on the towns of Pata and
Panamao. The JSCC, which was organized to deter election
violence, was chaired by the Comelec with the AFP and the PNP
under its control.

Less than a week earlier, on April 20, Imam Bula, a religious
leader in Pata, an island town south of Jolo, was killed. Sources
from the island said Bula was caught in the crossfire between two
opposing candidates for mayor, then the incumbent, Nurmina
Burahan of Lakas-Kampi, and his challenger, Hadji Zaldi Haddari
of the NPC.
According to the eyewitness account of an employee in the
Pata municipal government who asked not to be named for
security considerations, Haddari and his followers entered and
occupied Barangay Luuk Tulay, some six kilometers from the
town center. The barangay captain then sought the assistance of
the mayor who responded by shelling the barangay with mortar
fire in an attempt to regain control of the area.
The deployment of Marines in the locality after a couple of
days stemmed the escalation of violence.
Residents say that in the distant barangays of Sulu, when
a group of armed men identified with an opposing candidate
“occupied” a barangay, they were not there to campaign but to
control the voting and election outcome.
The Armed Violence Reduction Initiatives (AVRI), a
nongovernment program implemented in six of Sulu’s 19 towns,
monitored two other cases of violence during the election
period.
In Barangay Karungdung in the town of Kalingalan Caluang,
two persons were killed and one was wounded on March 1 in
an armed fight between a former barangay captain, Abdullah
Caluang, and a former vice mayor. The fatalities were from
Caluang’s group. The incident caused the temporary displacement
of families.
The PNP and Lakas-Kampi vice mayoral candidate, Benhur
A. Tawasil, immediately intervened and facilitated a conflict
resolution process the following day, resulting in a ceasefire
agreement.
AVRI also monitored an incident in the town of Siasi on
the third week of April where a heated discussion between two
supporters of opposing parties resulted in the shooting of Leon

Ajid, a supporter of NPC mayoral candidate Wilson Anni. The

alleged perpetrator was a rival candidate whose name has been
withheld as the case is yet to be investigated by authorities.
‘Peaceful’ elections
O
n election day itself, the AFP Western Mindanao
Command (WesMinCom) declared the actual conduct
of the elections in Sulu relatively peaceful.
WesMinCom chief Maj. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino reported
one incident of election-related violence in the province involving
unidentified men who open fired at civilians with small arms and
mortar shells in Barangay Tulay in the town of Panglima Estino.
One company of Scout Rangers pursued the perpetrators. No
casualties were reported.
But there were other incidents of harassment. In Lugus town,
Comelec’s Julie characterized the incident as “public partisan
armed harassment” that was meant to disenfranchise voters.
The JSCC also arrested one town councilor and three civilians
for carrying firearms on election day, in violation of the gun
ban.
Maj. Enrico A. Ramones, representative of the AFP in the
JSCC, identified the councilor as Naser Sappayani, 39, of Tapul
town. He was caught with a .45-caliber pistol as he was entering
Kalang Elementary School. Sappayani was turned over to the
PNP, which filed charges against him.
Ramones identified the three civilians as Romeo Sahiban,
40, Manan Dahi, 32, and Kalih Sahibal, 42, all of Larap village
of Lugus town. Elements of the Philippine Navy arrested them
and confiscated two M-1 Garand rifles, one .45-caliber pistol and
various types of ammunition during a search of their boat. The
suspects were likewise turned over to the PNP.
Task Force Kahanungan, a civil society initiative to monitor
and prevent election-related violence in Sulu, reported
five incidents of fistfights among hot-headed relatives and
supporters of local candidates in five towns on election day,

injuring 11 persons.
“It appears that gunfighting was replaced with fistfighting,”
said Birowa, manager of the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue
and Task Force Kahanungan. “This is a definitely an improvement
from the armed violence of the past elections.”

Violence before and after elections
T
he violence did not stop during election day however.
What started as a mere fistfight between supporters of
then opposing mayoral candidates Allayon M. Arbison Jr.
and Amia Buclao on election day in Luuk escalated to a firefight
days after. One person was wounded, and another was killed in
the incident, reported the AVRI.
The AVRI also reported two persons killed and another two
wounded during an armed encounter in Luuk in the month of
Ramadan involving the opposing groups of the Buclaos and the
group of Tulayan barangay captain Omar.
The seven incidents of election-relative violence resulted in
eight deaths and six wounded from March to May. From July to
August 2010, AVRI reported the deaths of 30 civilians, the result
mostly of armed attacks.
The spate of election-related violence is expected to continue
as most of these conflicts often end in a case of rido, a term used
by several tribes in Mindanao to refer to clan conflicts or violent
retaliation akin to revenge killing and feuding. In Sulu, 144 rido
cases were recorded from 1960 to 2004. This has resulted in
1,519 deaths and 1,269 wounded, and the displacement of 131
families. Of the total, 19 percent were caused by political rivalry,
according to the book Rido: Clan Feuding and Conflict Management
in Mindanao published by The Asia Foundation.
The statistics put Sulu as the province with the highest
incidence of rido in Mindanao and the most number of casualties,
giving Tan’s concept of “balance of terror” a meaning that goes
beyond the elections.
In blood feuding, balance of terror means that every member

of the clan inevitably becomes involved because this is the only

way that protection is guaranteed. A clan member who tries to
escape from this web of violence is left without protection and
without the means to protect himself or herself.
Outbreaks of rido “create enormous group pressure, which
firmly welds the in-group to a common fate,” writes Jonas
Grutzpalk in “Blood Feud and Modernity” published in 2002 in
the Journal of Classical Sociology. Thus, when left unresolved, the
violence tends to spiral, and the number of casualties increases.
Tan was himself a victim of rido in his youth. When his
father, a businessman, was killed over a rift related to the family’s
business, Tan was forced to quit his studies in a prestigious
university in Manila and called back home to Sulu to ensure his
safety. He described himself then as living the life of a virtual
prisoner, with his movement severely restricted.
In one public address as Sulu governor, Tan said he does not
want his children to suffer the same fate. He then declared that
he has forgiven all those involved in his family’s past rido and
extended his offer of reconciliation to his family’s rivals.
Violence, however, continues to hound the governor.
If Tan is to be believed, the bombing at the Zamboanga airport
on August 5 was a continuation of election violence.
But even that was not the first attempt on his life. On May
13, 2009, Tan was wounded by shrapnel from an assassin’s bomb
detonated at the provincial capitol road of Sulu as his convoy was
passing by.
While the initial reports again named the Abu Sayyaf Group
as the suspects, later developments implicated the political
opposition. Witnesses tagged Cocoy Tulawie, a member of
the Tulawie clan who are noted kingmakers in Sulu, as the
mastermind.
Carolyn Arguillas, editor of MindaNews, interviewed Tulawie
somewhere in Maguindanao province where he is hiding to
avoid the warrant of arrest issued against him. Tulawie denied
the accusations and said he was a mere victim of politics. He,
however, did not make public his theory as to who was behind

the assassination attempts on Tan.
Tan’s allegation of possible collusion between his political
opponents and terror groups jibes with an observation of
WestMinCom’s Dolorfino.
In an interview during the election period, Dolorfino likened
the first bomb attack on Tan to the bombing that killed former
Basilan governor Wahab Akbar at the House of Representatives
in November 2007. The same mode was observed in the April 13
bombing of Isabela City that killed 15 people, including five of
the suspects, and wounded 13 others.
Again, the AFP did not disclose the results of its investigations
on these incidents.
Local initiative
D
uring the 2010 elections, civil society groups
mobilized their forces and actively worked with the AFP,
PNP and members of the media to monitor the process
and ensure a peaceful and honest conduct of the exercise. They
called the initiative “Task Force Kahanungan (Peace).”
The task force was led by Amildasa Annil, president of the
Ulangig Mindanao, a nongovernment organization operating in
the ARMM. It monitored the incidence of violence and set up a
grievance committee to immediately act on potential sources of
conflict.
Learning from their election monitoring efforts, the AVRI
facilitated a dialogue among leaders of Sulu’s political clans on
September 21 and 22 in Zamboanga City to provide a neutral
ground for a dialogue to find a long-term solution to election-
related violence and mitigate the balance of terror in Sulu.
Convened under the auspices of the Office of the Mufti of Sulu,
the dialogue gathered 20 representatives of the most prominent
clans of the province. These included the clans of Governor Tan
and former vice governor Lady-Ann Sahidulla, who was elected
representative of Sulu’s second district. The clans of the Tulawie,
Caluang, Abdurajak, Estino, Kamlon, Tawasil, Undug, Bahjin,

Tingkahan, Sangkula, Hayudini, Ammas Mira–Ujan, Omar and

Daud also sent representatives to the dialogue.
Absent in the gathering were the representatives of the
Arbison clan, whose leader, Abdulmunir, ran for governor under
the NPC and lost to Tan. Arbison is contesting the results of the
election.
“This peace dialogue among political clans of Sulu is a
breakthrough in the effort to reduce armed violence during and
after elections and mitigate the escalation of violence into cases
of rido,” Birowa said.
The clan representatives, whom Birowa described as middle-
level leaders, signed a joint declaration signifying their agreement
to serve as third party peace facilitators and mediators whenever
armed conflict among clans would occur. They also agreed to
uphold Islamic tenets and principles in resolving clan conflicts
and to serve as a consultative body in Sulu to promote solidarity
and unity among political clan members. The agreement was
signed in the presence of Dolorfino and Commissioner Moner
Bajunaid of the National Commission of Muslim Filipinos.
The representatives agreed to meet again in the coming months
to chart concrete steps toward resolution of the clan conflicts.
They know that the dialogue had presented an opportunity that
they could afford not to seize for the resolution of armed conflict
in Sulu.
The longing to put and end to the violence in their province
resounded well when clan leader Hassan Caluang, after signing
of the joint declaration, said, “If my enemy were here right now,
I would hug him to resolve that conflict.”

Election Watchlist Areas in Sulu
1 Banguingui (Tongkil) 13 Pangutaran
2 Hadji Panglima Tahil (Marunggas) 14 Parang
3 Indanan 15 Pata
4 Jolo 16 Patikul
5 Kalingalan Caluang 17 Siasi
6 Lugus 18 Talipao
7 Luuk 19 Tapul
8 Maimbung
9 Old Panamao
10 Omar
11 Pandami
12 Panglima Estino (New Panamao)

Candidates campaign in a rural area in Tawi-Tawi.

TAWI-TAWI
A Tausug political
dynasty in the
land of the Sama
By Jules L. Benitez
‘P
eaceful on the outside, but trembling
inside.”
Fr. Lauro de Guia, Bongao’s parish
priest, believes this is how best to describe the
collective feeling of the people of Tawi-Tawi
about the political situation in their island province.
On the surface, all seems well in Tawi-Tawi, the country’s
southernmost province. In fact, the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP) Naval Task Force 62 assigned to Tawi-Tawi
declared the May 2010 elections “relatively peaceful” and the
results consequently credible.
But civil society leaders dispute this assessment. Shariah
lawyer Haidith Astarani agrees with De Guia. “Votes were not
Jules L. Benitez is a Mindanawon community journalist based in Zamboanga

City and is executive director of the nongovernment organization Mindanao
Development Fulcrum.

safeguarded here,” he said. “My understanding of peaceful
election is not merely the absence of physical violence but people
being able to vote without mental reservation and fear.”
The source of people’s fears, civil society leaders say, is the
powerful Sahali family, whose patriarch is a Tausug originally
from neighboring Sulu province. The first Sahali to be elected to
public office was Hadji Sadikul Adalla Sahali who ran and won as
mayor of the town of Balimbing, now called Panglima Sugala, in
1971.
In May 2010, after 39 years in politics, Sahali won a fresh
mandate as governor of Tawi-Tawi, making him a political force
longer than the existence of the province itself.
But his opponents say Sahali’s rule is one that has been
maintained through violence and fraud. Raising the issue to the
courts, the losing gubernatorial candidate, Rashidin H. Matba,
a member of the Sama tribe, filed a protest before the election
tribunal on charges that many ballots cast in the May 2010
elections were pre-filled by Sahali’s operatives.
Breaking from Sulu
T
awi-Tawi is one of five provinces of the Autonomous
Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). It is a small
province of only 11 towns but counts 107 islands and islets
within its boundaries. It is the Philippines’ farthest province to
the south, with one of its islands, Sibutu, separated only by a
narrow strait from Sabah in Malayasia and by the Celebes Sea
from Indonesia. In fact, Tawi-Tawi gets its name from the Malay
word “jau,” which means far. The term was repeated, as is
common in Malay usage, to “jaui-jaui,” meaning very far away,
said local historian Muhammad Kurais II.
To many historians, Tawi-Tawi may be the mystic islands of
ancient times. Kurais believes that one of Tawi-Tawi’s islands
might be the place referred to in the Arabian Nights with “a
colossal tortoise” and a “great roc”—a colorful bird—Sinbad the
Sailor visited. The peninsula is known for giant turtles. The roc

TAWI-TAWI: A Tausug political dynasty in the land of the Sama
described in the tales can be found in many of the crafts and arts
of native artists.
The legendary Princess Urduja, a warrior from the Northern
Luzon province of Pangasinan, could have also been from Tawi-
Tawi. Kurais argued that Urduja possessed the powers of an
amazon and ruled the kingdom of Tawalisi, which was described
in the travels of geographer Ibn Batutu in 1355. Urduja was said
to have spoken a native tongue akin to that of the Sama people
who inhabit Tawi-Tawi.
Indeed, the history of Taw-Tawi is as colorful as its scenery
and inhabitants of today. It also tells of a people keen on asserting
their independence and integrity.
Tawi-Tawi used to be part of Sulu province. But local
politicians and leaders belonging to the Sama tribe wanted to
break away from Sulu, which is dominated by the Tausug tribe.
In 1947, local leaders presented a petition to then President
Manuel Roxas seeking the creation of the municipality of Tawi-
Tawi to be carved out of the province of Sulu. The petition hit a
dead end with Roxas’ sudden death.
Another attempt was made in 1954 during the term of
President Ramon Magsaysay. This time, the proposal was to make
Tawi-Tawi a province. Again, misfortune fell on the petition with
Magsaysay’s untimely death in a plane crash in 1957.
Only in 1973 did the efforts of the Sama leaders bear fruit.
Datu Alawangsa Amilbangsa and a young lawyer, Ubian Hadji
Madsan Amilhassan, convinced then President Ferdinand Marcos
to make Tawi-Tawi a separate province from Sulu.
“Mr. President, by separating Tawi-Tawi from Sulu, you are
already emancipating the Sama people from the bondage of the
Suluans,” Amilbangsa said.
On September 11, 1973, just a year after he placed the entire
country under martial law, Marcos signed Presidential Decree
No. 302 that marked the secession of Tawi-Tawi from Sulu.

The rise of a political dynasty
B
y the time Tawi-Tawi became a province, Hadji Sadikul
Adalla Sahali was already in power.
Violence has marked his rise through the political ladder,
but he refutes this perception, asking, “Why is it that every time
a killing occurs, they would blame it on me?”
In 1965, Sahali graduated from the Mindanao Agricultural
College (now Central Mindanao University) in Musuan, Bukidnon
with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering. Born and
raised in Indanan, Sulu, he chose to work at the Department
of Agriculture in the town of Panglima Sugala, then known as
Balimbing. His job was to develop the agricultural potentials of
the place, at the time a bustling trading port of the Tawi-Tawi
Peninsula and still part of the province of Sulu. Having come
from a family of farmers, Sahali loved his assignment and the
challenges that came with it.
In 1971, he decided to run for mayor of Balimbing, won and
stayed in power for the next 16 years.
During the 1988 elections, he sought to keep his post.
Political observers, however, said the election was marred by the
assassination of a Sama leader, Abdulkadil Ibnohajil, who was
Sahali’s closest rival for the position. Shariah lawyer Astarani
said Ibnohajil’s assassin was not identified and the case remains
unsolved.
Sahali handily won and served for two terms until 1995.
In May 1998, he aspired for the governorship and won. In that
election, his second daughter, Regie Sahali-Generale, joined the
political fray and won as mayor of Panglima Sugala, replacing
her father. In 2004, it was the turn of Regie’s brother Nurbert
to run for mayor, but he too was accused of orchestrating the
assassination of political rivals.
One of those who challenged Nurbert in the 2004 elections
was a Sama leader named Galib Bidin, who used to be an ally of
the Sahalis and was, in fact, Regie’s vice mayor. They parted ways,

Sahali’s mansion in Bonggao.


Sheik Makhdum Mosque in
Simunul, Taw-Tawi, the first
mosque in the Philippines.

with Bidin eventually losing to Nurbert.

Two years later, Bidin was assassinated, said Mansur Sakili, 62,
the Provincial Information Director of the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF). The Front asserts that there is a concerted effort to
stem the rise of native Sama leaders into the hierarchy of Tawi-
Tawi politics and cited the killing of Bidin as a case in point. The
MILF is currently organizing its political structure in the province
in preparation for self-governance and determination once the
peace agreement with the national government is concluded and
signed. “Tawi-Tawi is for the Sama,” Sakili said.
The story goes that whoever wanted Bidin assasinated first
killed his brother to lure Bidin back to Tawi-Tawi from Manila
where he had gone into hiding, Sakili said. As is the custom of
Tawi-Tawi families, siblings are expected to pay their last respects
on the burial ground of departed loved ones. Bidin returned to
the capital Bongao months later and was shot dead.
The MILF said these assassinations, which remain unresolved
with the perpetrators unidentified, have had a crippling effect on
the people. “Wala nang native Sama na gustong tumakbo laban sa
gobernador (No native Sama will dare oppose the governor),” said
Sakili.
But Sahali, who identifies himself as a Tawi-Tawian, countered,
“Such observation is unfair and unsubstantiated.”
Sahali is married to Juana Maquiso, the principal of Batu-
Batu National High School in Panglima Sugala. They have five
children, all of whom, except for Rosemin who is deceased, have
followed in their father’s footsteps.
Hadja Ruby, the governor’s eldest daughter, served as
the regional secretary of Department of Social Welfare and
Development in the ARMM and is now the province’s vice
governor. Regie is a representative to the Regional Legislative
Assembly. Nurbert is mayor of Panglima Sugala. Youngest son
Nurjay is secretary to the governor.


Culture of silence and violence
A
rced Abdulkahal, 31, a local businessmen, said
protests against incidents of election-related violence in
the province are often silenced by fear and money. “Dito,
kapag nagkagulo, pera kaagad ang katapat upang matahimik (Here,
whenever violence happens, payment of money is immediately
resorted to settle the conflict),” he said.
This observation is shared by many, including Babylyn Kano-
Omar, longtime manager of DXGD radio station in Bongao. She
said, “Everybody is compensated. Bakit ka pa manggugulo (Why
would anyone want to create trouble)?”
Abdulkahal, who is also a peace and development advocate
of the national government’s Action for Conflict Transformation
for Peace Program, cited the killing of policeman Abdulmijil Kali
and his two daughters aged five and seven.
He said the killing followed an earlier altercation between the
victim and Matarul Dahi, the barangay captain of Look Pandan
in Bongao, during the November 2009 registration of voters. Kali
was accompanying new registrants to the centralized registration
in the capital and came upon Dahi allegedly stalling the list-
up of voters identified to be followers of a rival politician. Kali
confronted the barangay captain.
Other sources would say that it was the policeman who made
provocative statements that angered Dahi.
By afternoon, Kali was shot while driving a motorcycle in
Bongao along with his three daughters. Only his eight-year-old
daughter survived.
After a month, the relatives of the policeman retaliated and
killed Dahi’s wife, Abdulkahal said. Three days later, a male
cousin of the barangay captain was killed along with the man’s
son.
To prevent the incidents from evolving into a full-blown rido
or clan war, Sahali intervened. Sources said the governor paid
diyyat—blood money—to both parties to settle the conflict.

Governor Sadikul Sahali answers

questions from VERA Files.

With the offering of diyyat, the warring parties suspended
armed hostilities during the election period. But fighting resumed
weeks after the elections, and local media reported three fatalities
as a consequence.
Loose firearms and private army
W
hile violence continues in Tawi-Tawi, the police
have not apprehended bearers of loose firearms.
Superintendent Mipunud Marohom, Tawi-Tawi
police chief, said the operations conducted by the Philippine
Natinal Police (PNP) against loose firearms under Comelec
Resolution No. 8714 during the election period yielded “negative
results.” He said, “There were no illegal firearms caught in the
mobile checkpoints.”
Local folk also talk about the existence of a private army
allegedly being maintained by the governor.
MILF’s Sakili accused the governor of harboring what is known
as his “Indanan Boys,” an armed group numbering a hundred
and recruited from the governor’s birthplace in Indanan, Sulu.
The governor has called the accusation baseless and an attempt
to discredit his leadership.
Marohom also said there are no private armies in Tawi-Tawi.
“Hindi naman active (They are inactive),” he justified.
However, an incident on Turtle Islands brought to light the
issue of the governor’s private army, although this occurred
before the official start of the election period.
Trouble on Turtle Islands

On October 28, 2009, as voter registration was taking place
on the island of Great Bakungan (also spelled Bacungan) in
the town of Turtle Islands, a shootout erupted after a heated
argument between then mayor Omarkhan Aripin and a retired
police officer, according to a report by the AFP Western Mindanao
Command.

Witnesses, however, insisted it was more than a shootout.

Haimel Bidoy, a Turtle Islands councilor, said in a sworn affidavit
filed with the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), “At about
5:45 in the morning of October 26, 2009, we heard and saw
(that) Jabbar Sahibil, Hadji Umbilang Gampal, Hadji Imran
Gampal, along with other armed men, discriminately fired at the
dwellings in our barangay and started to loot.”
Sahibil is said to be the caretaker of the governor’s properties
on Great Bakungan, one of the seven islets that constitute Turtle
Islands. The islets are a marine protected area, and a sanctuary
and nesting ground of the endangered giant turtles.
The firing, witnesses said, lasted more than five hours and
ended at 11 a.m.
The following day, some 50 to 75 men in full battle gear
arrived on the island aboard two speedboats, identified by one
of the witnesses as the “Thunderbull,” which is owned by the
governor. The men were later identified as provincial guards.
The incident took place amid questions over the sale of
Great Bakungan to Sahali’s children, who reportedly bought it
for P3 million from its original owner, a certain Rolando Tan.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the
municipal government led by Aripin contested the sale, arguing
that the islands are public land and part of a protected area, and
therefore could not be sold.
The AFP’s naval forces conducted interdiction operations to
prevent violence from escalating. But more than 100 families
still fled to safer ground in the neighboring islets, Bidoy said.
Others moved to nearby Sabah, Malaysia. Eleven of them traveled
to Zamboanga City to seek refuge and bring the incident to the
attention of the CHR.
Elmina Adil, barangay captain of Poblacion, said in her
affidavit that the intention of the armed men was “to harass the
residents for them to abandon the place.”
The PNP’s Marohom, however, reported “there were no
casualties” in these incidents.
Acting on the complaints, the CHR in Zamboanga City filed

a case against Sahali and several of his officials for grave threats,
grave coercion and expulsion. A subpoena dated January 29 was
sent, asking the governor and his fellow respondents to answer
the accusations. The governor has yet to respond to the case.
Bidoy, who ran for reelection as councilor but was unable
to cast his vote and lost, said about 500 supporters of his party,
the Nacionalista Party (NP), were disenfranchised. He accused
Sahali of aiding Lakas-CMD candidate Mibaral M. Tang by
fielding a 150-member private army that arrived on the island
aboard M/L Princess Juana—named after Sahali’s wife Juana—a
few days before the elections.
But Capt. Erick Kagaon, commander of Naval Task Force 62,
said elections on Turtle Islands were successful and peaceful.
On the eve of elections, the government security forces
conducted a “pulong-pulong” (meeting) among the candidates,
reminding them that no private armies and armed violence were
allowed during the election. Kagaon said his men did not see
private armies in the area.

Politics of kith and kin
A
side from affirming the Sahalis’ hold on power, the May
2010 elections were perceived to be a repudiation by the
Sama people of one of their own, Rashidin H. Matba, son
of the late and former governor Gerry Matba. Sahali, a Tausug,
won overwhelmingly over Matba, effectively putting a stop to the
return of the Matbas and Sama leadership.
Elsewhere in the province, other smaller dynasties have taken
root.
In seven of Tawi-Tawi’s 11 towns, members of the same
family vied for the top posts in the local elections. This prompted
the MILF to brand the elections and governance in the province
as a “politics of kin.”
“Election in Tawi-Tawi is about family business enterprise
and not about governance,” Sakili said.
Sakili, who was the general manager of the Tawi-Tawi

Electric Cooperative for 20 years, added that the intention for

such a practice is to gain sole control over the resources of the
government. He said, “Sila lang ang makahawak sa pera ng gobyerno
(They will have sole control over government funds).”
The list of official candidates in the 2010 elections of indicates
a variety of kith and kin tandems.
In Sapa-Sapa, a mother-daughter tandem led in the election
contest. Shameera Matolo ran for mayor while her mother, Putli-
aisa Matolo, who used to be the mayor, slid down to become vice
mayor. Both are Nacionalistas. But failure of elections in one of
the barangays of Sapa-Sapa affected the results of the elections,
prompting the Comelec to withhold the declaration of winners.
Initial results showed Shameera losing to her opponent but her
mother winning the vice mayoral race.
In Tandu Bas, the tandem is husband and wife. Then mayor
Rahima Sali ran for vice mayor to give way to her husband
Pendatun Sali, who was running for mayor. Both are members of
the Lakas-Kampi coalition and won the elections.
In Languyan, Romel Matba ran for mayor under the banner
of Aksyon Demokratiko with his uncle, Amman Hasbi Matba, as
his vice mayor. Romel lost the elections to Yashmael Sali.
In Simunul town where the Philippines’ oldest mosque is
found, the incumbent mayor, Benzar Tambut, was eyeing a third
term in office and chose his daughter, Nurnien, as his running
mate. Both ran under the NP. Tambut lost to Nazif Ahmad
Abdurrahman of the Liberal Party, but his daughter, who is still a
student, won.
In South Ubian, it was a mother-son tandem with Salma
Omar running as mayor and her son Mustapha as vice mayor.
Both won. The head of the family is currently an assemblyman of
the ARMM.
In Sitangkai, dubbed the “Venice of the South” because of
its waterways, the Ahaja brothers took the top posts. The elder
brother, Serbin, who was the mayor at the time, ran for vice mayor
to pave the way for his sibling Tiblan’s return as chief executive.
Tiblan ran as an NP candidate and Serbin as Lakas-Kampi bet.

Both ran unopposed. Tiblan’s son, Nur, is also an assemblyman
in the ARMM, and his other son, Allan, ran as a provincial board
member and topped the elections.
In Panglima Sugala, the mayoral candidate, Nurbert Sahali,
is the son of the governor. Like his father, he handily won the
elections.
Julgabir I. Sappayani, 59, Department of Interior and Local
Government provincial director, sees nothing wrong at all
with the politics of kin. “Hindi naman nasisira ang governance
(Governance is not destroyed),” he said. “Nandiyan na yan (It is
already there). We will have to accept (it).”
He attributed this practice to party decision, endorsement
of supporters or elections being viewed as a process of getting
relatives employed.
MILF’s Sakili, on the other hand, attributed this phenomenon
to role modeling. He said that elected officials are just following
the example set by the governor who has his daughter, Ruby
Sahali, as the vice governor.
The practice, the MILF information director said, is no
different from “the Philippine president having her sons run
for governor and congressional representative,” in reference to
former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Election Watchlist
Areas in Tawi-Tawi
1 Bongao
2 Languyan
3 Mapun
4 Panglima Sugala
5 Sapa-Sapa
6 Sibutu
7 Simunul
8 Sitangkai
9 South Ubian
10 Tandubas
11 Turtle Islands

A police commando guards outside an election
precinct in the hinterland town of Sumisip.
Photo by Charlie Salceda

BASILAN
Ballots ‘stained
with blood’
By Antonio M. Manaytay
I
n the morning of April 13, barely a month before the
May 2010 elections, three bomb blasts shook Isabela
City on Basilan island, killing 15 people and wounding
14 others.
The first of the blasts occurred inside a van in
front of the Basilan National High School. The van was
believed to be carrying the bombers who, the police said, might
have mishandled the device, causing it to explode prematurely.
Responding policemen and Marines were fired upon by 15 enemy
snipers. Three soldiers were killed, and one was wounded.
A few hours later, the second bomb went off just outside
the Sta. Isabel Cathedral in the center of the city, where 13
people were injured. Seventeen vehicles were damaged from the
bombing.
Antonio M. Manaytay, a BS Physics graduate of Silliman University, is a freelance

writer and church pastor.

The third explosion occurred near the house of Judge Leo Jay
Principe of the Basilan Regional Trial Court. Principe had issued
warrants of arrest for some 130 members of the bandit group
Abu Sayyaf and the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF), who in July 2007 waylaid a convoy of military vehicles
and killed 14 Marines, 10 of whom they beheaded.
The scale and intensity of the bombings made it the worst
case of violence to occur during the election period on this
southern Philippines island. But the incidents do not appear
in reports of the Philippine National Police (PNP) as election-
related. They are classified instead as terrorist attacks, even as
they disrupt the conduct of elections and sow fear among voters,
teachers and election officials.

Basilan history
T
he perception is that election time or not, Basilan
is a dangerous place ruled by armed groups and
characterized by violent political rivalries. But things
were not always this bad.
Decades ago, during the American colonization of the
Philippines, Basilan was part of the special province of
Zamboanga that then included the other provinces of Western
Mindanao. When the town of Zamboanga became a city, Basilan
fell under it as one district. This is why some residents of Basilan
are Chavacano, referring to the people and language spoken in
Zamboanga City. The dominant ethnic group in the province is
Yakan.
The whole of Basilan eventually became a city, and in the
1970s, then President Ferdinand Marcos decreed the creation
of Basilan province. In 2001, Basilan became part of the
Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
Basilan is a 1,359-square-kilometer island just off the tip
of Zamboanga Peninsula with 12 towns and one city, Lamitan.
Although Isabela City lies within the island of Basilan, it is a
chartered city independent of the province. Muslims compose

BASILAN: Ballots ‘stained with blood’
three-fourths of the population, but they own only a fourth of

the land, a fact that has caused much unrest over the years.
Agriculture is the province’s main economic activity, but the
island has always been known for its rubber. Basilan’s potential
for rubber grew when, in the early years of American colonial
rule, U.S. corporations, including tire manufacturers Goodyear
and Sime Darby, put up rubber plantations there.
Basilan also happens to lie within the Sulu Archipelago,
a group of hundreds of islands where smugglers, pirates and
Muslim rebels roamed. Basilan had an active contingent of
Muslim secessionist Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
rebels.
By the mid-1990s when the MNLF was talking peace with
the national government, another armed group rose in Basilan:
the terrorist-trained bandit group Abu Sayyaf, which engaged
in kidnap-for-ransom activities. The Abu Sayyaf went on a
rampage, abducting and holding hostage foreign tourists and
missionaries, and even local schoolteachers and priests, in some
cases beheading their victims. In 2007, the extremist group
waylaid a group of soldiers and beheaded 10 of them.
The Abu Sayyaf, which is believed to have links with
the international terrorist network al-Qaeda, has claimed
responsibility for the country’s worst terrorist attacks, including
the 2001 kidnapping of an American missionary couple and
the 2004 ferry bombing that killed more than 100 people.
Its activities put Basilan in the map of antiterrorism efforts,
prompting the U.S. government to, at one point, designate the
province a second front in the war on terror.

Politicians with rebel roots
A
t the time the Abu Sayyaf rose to international
notoriety, two politicians were in power. One was
Gerry Salapuddin, MNLF chairman for Basilan in
the 1970s, who eventually became a member of the
Batasan Pambansa, later governor and then member of the

House of Representatives.
One of Salapuddin’s former allies-turned-rivals was Wahab
Akbar, a former student activist whose father was a Moro rebel.
Akbar later joined the MNLF and was sent for training to Libya,
where he was said to have met Khadafi Janjalani, the founder of
the Abu Sayyaf.
Akbar became governor from 1998 to 2007, at the height of
the Abu Sayyaf’s operations in Basilan. There were allegations
Akbar coddled the Abu Sayyaf because he supposedly founded
it together with Janjalani in the 1980s, an accusation he had
denied.
During his first and only privilege speech after being elected
congressman of Basilan’s lone congressional district in 2007,
Akbar said, “Mr. Speaker, when I joined politics, there were
accusations that I was the founder of the bulls--t Abu Sayyaf.
Nung buhay pa sila, problema ko na, hanggang sa patay na
sila problema ko pa rin (When they were alive, they were my
problem. They’re dead but they remain my problem).”
The Armed Forces of the Philippines was supposed to have
extinguished the Abu Sayyaff in the early 2000s, but armed
groups continue to exist in Basilan, often classified as either Abu
Sayyaf or MILF, a breakaway group of the MNLF.
Akbar had a hand in fuelling the violence on the island,
which is attributed not only to terrorist groups but also to the
rivalry between him and other politicians.
In 2006, Akbar admitted to having distributed or bought an
average of 10 guns for every village. There are more than 200
recognized villages on Basilan.
In an interview with media during the 2007 election
campaign, Akbar said, “Guns are everywhere. Everybody loves
guns here. The best solution is to give guns to those people who
cannot protect themselves.”
Days before the 2007 elections, supporters of both Akbar and
Salappudin were caught with unlicensed weapons. On election
day, a firefight between political foes in a polling station resulted
in three deaths and a monthlong delay in the canvassing of

A supporter of a political candidate tries to

convince a voter in a village in Sumisip town.

Two illiterate voters get help from poll
volunteers in the town of Sumisip.

ballots. A school where some of the recounting took place was

bombed. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) declared
a failure of elections in Akbar and Sumisip towns where poll-
related violence was rampant and “uncontrollable.”
In November 2007, Akbar was himself killed when a bomb
exploded near a vehicle he was in at the House of Representatives.
The police blamed Salapuddin and other Basilan politicians for
the bombing.
But Akbar, who served three terms as governor, had ensured
his family’s political survival by fielding relatives in key positions
in the province. In 2007, the year he became congressman, two
of his wives were elected governor of Basilan and mayor of Isabela
City while seven other relatives were voted to various positions
on the island.
With Akbar’s death, the question was whether or not violence
would come to an end as well. The people of Basilan know only
too well the answer to that question.

Violence without fail
O
n February 17, a little more than a month into
the election period, a barangay councilman in
Tipo-Tipo town, Nasirin Bassah, was shot dead
with a .45-caliber pistol after attending a wedding.
In Lamitan City, Bassam Hakimin, who was seeking
reelection as councilor, was gunned down by unknown men
with an M-16 rifle as he was riding his motorcyle to Akbar town
on April 9, one month before the polls.
The two cases are among the nine the PNP classified as
election-related violent incidents (ERVI) in Basilan. But the
province’s election officer, Wilfred Daraug, is among the first to
say that many more cases, especially in the farflung towns, go
unreported.
“Historically, the province is prone to election-related
violence due to the presence of armed groups and intense
political rivalry,” he said.

For the 2010 polls, Daraug said, “In Basilan alone, the
number of violent incidents was high during election day.”
A group of men identified with Sumisip mayoral candidate
Boy Hataman ambushed Marines troops securing election
inspectors who were distributing the ballots in one barangay and
wounded one soldier. In another village later in the day, a pistol-
wielding barangay councilman snatched the official ballot boxes
of four precincts at the Marang Elementary School.
Incidents of electoral violence had been recorded in Sumisip
town before these. On February 2, three persons were wounded
when a truck owned by Hataman struck a landmine in Barangay
Bacung. On April 22, the jeep issued to a barangay captain by
incumbent Mayor Haber Asarul was burned.

Election failure
I
n Al-Barka town, Governor Jum Akbar, the widow
of Wahab Akbar, had to ask the Comelec to hold special
elections in five of its 16 villages where the May 10 polls
were declared a failure because of violence and the failure
of Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) members to report for
work on election day. In Barangay Bato-Bato alone, suspected
members of the MNLF “Lost Command” led by a Commander
Basher FNU fired mortar shells at a polling center late in the
afternoon, forcing voters and poll inspectors to evacuate. No
one was hurt.
Special elections also had to be called for two barangays
in the town of Maluso where BEI members failed to show up
for duty. In Maluso as well, a bomb exploded at the back of the
Portholand Elementary School on May 13 as votes were being
canvassed.
Incidents of fraud and scuffles were also observed during the
special polls that were held on June 3 in both Maluso and Al-
Barka.
Full automation might have helped making elections cleaner
and orderly in other areas of the country, but not in Basilan, said

A Muslim woman casts her vote

during elections in Sumisip town.

Basilan Bishop Martin Jumoad, who also heads the provincial
Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV),
Comelec’s citizens arm.
Sumisip was not the only town to report incidents of ballot
snatching on election day. In Tabuan-Lasa, 256 pieces of official
ballots at the Kaumpurnah Elementary School were snatched by
an unidentified group.
A few days after the elections, blank official ballots and
compact flash cards were seen dumped in one of the garbage
bins. The Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines had
used the cards to store electronic data.
“So little has changed in local elections in the province—even
without Wahab Akbar,” said Jumoad. “Violence, harassment of
voters and cheating happened even in automated elections.”
Allan Ortega, a 32-year-old local businessman, is not
surprised. Elections in Basilan have always been “stained with
blood,” Akbar or no Akbar, he said. “It only shows bloody
elections will just go on and will continue to hound us.”
Comelec control
P
utting the whole of Basilan under Comelec control
to avert bloodshed in the 2010 elections apparently did
not make much of a difference.
The Comelec, through an assigned commissioner,
is empowered to decide election-related matters in areas placed
under its control. Only administrative matters remain in the
hands of local officials.
But Daraug said the election commissioner assigned to
Basilan left for Manila on the same day the elections were held.
“Natakot siguro (Perhaps he got frightened),” the election officer
said.
“The whole concept of putting Basilan under Comelec
control was an exercise in futility,” Jamju Rivera, executive
director of Basilan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said.
The Comelec decision was useless because, he said, “their men

would just leave the place because of fear.”

What the Basilan people need, Rivera said, is a stronger
“military presence during elections to ensure a peaceful, orderly
and honest elections.”
Special provincial board elections
E
lections for Basilan’s Sangguniang Panlalawigan
turned out to be even more problematic, and would take
six months to settle.
Complaints from candidates forced the Comelec
to nullify the May 10 results for the both districts that make
up the Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) and schedule a general
election. It so happened that the Comelec Central Office in
Manila had made a “mistake,” having printed the names of
candidates in one district on the ballot for the other district.
But Herminio Montebon, a losing candidate for the provincial
board, said, “I cannot understand why they have to nullify the
results for the two districts when it is only in District 2 where
the names were mixed up.”
The Comelec set the special elections for November 13. In
effect, the governor and vice governor had to run the capitol
for months without an SP. “It was difficult for the provincial
government to operate without the provincial board,” said
Governor Jum Akbar, who won her second term over closest
rival, party-list congressman Mujiv Hataman.
And it was not all quiet in the weeks leading to the polls.
On October 11, Entong Musa, election officer of Tuburan town,
was shot dead by a lone assassin while driving his motorcycle in
Barangay Calle Posporo in Isabela City. Provincial police director
Senior Superintendent Cristeto Rey Gonzalodo said he believes
the killing was related to the victim’s job as election officer.
To ensure the peaceful and orderly conduct of the special
elections, police and military forces, backed up by Special Action
Force personnel, were deployed to the island weeks ahead of
November 13.

When the votes came in that day, majority of the eight-
member provincial legislative body were partymates of Governor
Akbar. Comelec and police officials concluded that the conduct
of the special elections were “successful.”
“It is how things are in this province,” Jumoad said wryly.
“We finished the local elections six months after the original
schedule, and we call it ‘successful.’”
Election
Watchlist Areas
in Basilan
1 Lamitan
2 Sumisip
3 Maluso
4 Ungkaya Pukan
5 Lantawan
6 Tipo-Tipo
7 Tuburan
8 Al-Barka
9 Hadji Mohammad Ajul
10 Akbar
11 Hadji Muhtamad
12 Tabuan-Lasa

Reelectionist Governor Aurelio Umali campaigns among poor Novo
Ecijanos. He would win the elections, along with his wife Czarina,
reelected representative in the third congressional district, and his
brother Anthony, who topped the board member slot.
Photo by Carlos Marquez

NUEVA ECIJA
‘Wild, wild west’
no more
By Carlos Marquez Jr.
T
ime was when the province of Nueva Ecija was
considered the Philippines’ own “wild, wild west.”
Violence would ensue if political rivals as much as
exchanged glances in a cockpit arena or passed each
other by on the highway, shooting it out in broad
daylight in full public view, causing many deaths.
Novo Ecijanos like to think that is all so long ago. After all,
there were hardly any deaths in the past two elections, except for
the killing of a barangay captain in Aliaga town in April 2010 and
a municipal councilor in Licab town in September, just a month
before the barangay elections. This is a record in a province that
has always been considered an election hotspot, where killings
characterized elections from the 1960s to the late 2000s.
Carlos Marquez has been writing for various national dailies for the past 30 years,
and contributes to a London-based science and technology web magazine. He is the
editor of the business-tourism magazine Nueva Ecija Gold.

Academics, the police and civil society all agree that the winds
of change are blowing through Nueva Ecija. But they also agree
this does not necessarily mean the end of political violence in the
province.
What is happening now, they say, is that political players
may have modified their tactical paradigms after the old political
families fell from power and new ones emerged. The days when
politicians engaged in a toe-to-toe fight-to-the-finish type of
rivalry are over.
The single dominant political force in Nueva Ecija used to be
the Joson family, which ruled the province for most of nearly half
a century. But the Josons fell from power in 2007, replaced by
several upstart clans that seem to be still searching for a political
foothold.
“Political tension at the elite level may have dissipated after
the Josons were eased out of power,” said Flor Amor Monta, a
socio-political scientist who heads the Open University System of
the Central Luzon State University (CLSU).
Analysts also surmise that violence merely shifted from the
center to the periphery—from provincial to the municipal or
even the barangay level. A study on election violence in Nueva
Ecija conducted by the Ateneo School of Government pointed
out, “Violence has transformed into a decentralized form as new
political forces started to emerge.”
The Ateneo study further reveals that not only has the violence
moved from the cities to the villages away from public view, but also
that people are reluctant to report violence, and do not even want
to get involved in politics. Hence, there is scant information on
whether or not violence has indeed disappeared from Nueva Ecija.
The Joson clan
N
ueva Ecija is a province in Central Luzon, landlocked
and mostly flatlands. Surrounded by the provinces of
Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Pangasinan, Aurora and
Nueva Vizcaya, it is also next door to the Sierra Madre mountains

NUEVA ECIJA: ‘Wild, wild west’ no more
where the communist insurgency still festers.

Agriculture remains the province’s main economic activity.
As such, Nueva Ecija is home to an active peasant movement,
which provided a base of support for the Communist Party of the
Philippines and the New People’s Army, which maintain Asia’s
longest running insurgency.
Armed resistance is part of Nueva Ecija’s long history. In
March 1942, the people’s resistance to the Japanese occupation
gained form through the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon
(People’s Army Against the Japanese) or Hukbalahap, which was
first organized in Cabiao town with Luis Taruc as commander.
In fact, Nueva Ecija’s longtime governor, Eduardo Joson Sr.,
was part of this anti-Japanese resistance and was said to have
nurtured close ties with the Hukbalahap.
Joson became legendary for his role in what is known in
American military records as the raid on Cabanatuan in 1945,
when Filipino and American forces attacked a Japanese camp and
rescued several prisoners of war. A dramatization of that raid,
in fact, became the opening sequence in the John Wayne movie
“Back to Bataan,” and was the subject of a more recent film called
“The Great Raid.”
In 1959, Joson ran for governor and won, starting a political
rule over Nueva Ecija that would last until 2007, when his son,
Tomas III, ended three terms as governor.
Eduardo Joson became governor of Nueva Ecija for four terms,
and his family became the epitome of a Filipino political dynasty.
Aside from Eduardo Sr. and Tomas III, several other members held
various elective positions over the years. The more prominent were
Eduardo Nonato who became congressman, his brothers Eduardo
IV and Mariano Cristino and nephew Edward Thomas who became
vice governors, and brother Eduardo III who became vice mayor of
Cabanatuan, the province’s main urban center.
Although the Josons were fierce toward political enemies, the
patriarch, Eduardo Sr., built a reputation of benevolence toward
ordinary people. In his book, The Politics of NGOs in Southeast Asia:
Participation and protest in the Philippines, Gerald Clarke writes about

the nongoverment Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement
(PRRM) which used Nueva Ecija as a “social laboratory.”
“PRRM’s work in its Nueva Ecija ‘social laboratory’ and the
local government legislation it helped introduce between 1955
and 1963 had little impact on provincial politics where Governor
Eduardo Joson was reelected in 1963, 1967 and 1971, each time
with a comfortable majority,” Clarke said.
Eduardo Sr. mastered the art of political patronage, which
helped him and his sons maintain their control over the
province. Wrote William Wolters in New Beginings or Return to
the Past in Nueva Ecija Politics: “Joson earned the gratitude of
many people in the (barrios) with his program of free medicines
and hospitalization to indigents. One of Joson’s other programs
promoted education for barangay children, providing them with
loans for schools in Manila that are paid after graduation. In
addition, the governor offered free room, tuition and medical
insurance to nearly 700 students throughout the province
studying in colleges in Cabanatuan City.”
Joson vs. Perez
B
ut the Josons showed no benevolence toward political
rivals, chief among them the late Honorato Perez, who
was once mayor of Cabanatuan, which was not only the
province’s urban center but also the seat of anti-Joson opposition.
It was known in Nueva Ecija that while the Josons held sway over
much of the province’s rural areas, the one place they could not
control was Cabanatuan, Perez’s turf.
The rivalry between the Josons and Perez’s group began in
broad daylight one day in June 1980 when heavily armed men
raided and burned the old Cabanatuan City Hall. Nine died and
more than a dozen were wounded, but Perez managed to escape
the inferno by jumping out of his office toilet window on the
second floor of the building.
Eleven years later, in November 1991, the patriarch’s son
and at the time Cabanatuan City vice mayor, Eduardo “Danding”

Joson III, was killed in an ambush. The principal suspect was Alex
Quibuyen whose father Andres, Perez’s secretary, was gunned
down by unidentified assailants two weeks earlier. Perez was then
serving his third term as mayor.
And one afternoon in April 1995, Perez, then a gubernatorial
candidate, was himself killed in a highway shootout in Talavera
town. The suspects were then governor Tomas III and his brother,
then Quezon town mayor Mariano Cristino, along with a slew of
bodyguards believed to include jail officers, policemen and soldiers.
The Joson entourage was supposedly on a campaign sortie, but was
also on the trail of Quibuyen who lived in the area.
The Joson brothers were later charged with double murder and
frustrated murder, jailed and served time. They were pardoned
during the term of President Joseph Estrada, whose candidacy for
presidency the clan supported in the 1998 elections.
In 2007, Tomas III reached the end of his rule as governor
after serving the maximum three consecutive terms. Mariano
Cristino sought to replace him but lost to Aurelio “Öyie” Umali,
who won reelection in the 2010 polls.
Other forms of violence
T
he situation in Nueva Ecija is complicated by the
existence of two other forms of election-related violence
(ERV). Besides political rivals, perpetrators include the
communist insurgents—“nonstate actors”—on the one hand
and the police and the military— “state actors”—on the other,
according to the Ateneo study.
The killings of a number of barangay captains have been
blamed on insurgents. Politicians, meanwhile, are known to tap
into the base of communist rebels who, in turn, get resources
from politicians, mostly through the permits to campaign
(PTC) and permits to win (PTW) they require of candidates.
Responding to the changing political landscape, groups affiliated
with the insurgents have also gone above ground to participate in
elections, annoying the military.

As a consequence, the military’s counter-insurgency activities
of the military have “become unclear with regards to how they
are supposed to deal with these groups,” said the study.
The Ateneo study pointed to the involvement of the military
in episodes of ballot snatching and of threats and harassment that
had led to voters’ disenfranchisement in the past, an allegation
the military and police have denied. It also cited the report of
United Nations Rapporteur Philip Alston in 2007 documenting
30 extrajudicial killings in Nueva Ecija. The victims were members
of Left-leaning party-list groups.
“The presence of other elements other than political rivals and
the violence they inflict, whether election-related or not, saturate
the province with various forms of violence which makes it hard
for the stakeholders and the general public to distinguish what is
election-related and what is not; hence, ERV often overlaps with
the larger concept of political violence,” according to the study.
Local clans and national support
N
ational leaders like Estrada seek the support of
local political clans like the Josons in their heyday for a
number of reasons. In Nueva Ecija’s case, one of those
reasons is the province’s being the country’s rice granary. The
Ateneo study said, “The province can also be worth controlling
as, in terms of resources, it is the main provider of rice in the
country.”
Nueva Ecija is also opposition country and a major base of
the longrunning communist insurgency.
But the main reason the support of dominant political
families is crucial to presidential candidates like Estrada in 1998 is
control of votes. The Ateneo study notes that out of the country’s
81 provinces, Nueva Ecija is 11th in terms of number of voters.
In Central Luzon, Nueva Ecija is the second richest province in
terms of voters, after Bulacan.
Social researcher Shubert Ciencia of PRRM said the Joson-
Perez rivalry was “an offshoot of the need to control the

concentration of the province’s voting population.” The Josons’

control was incomplete without Cabanatuan, where almost a
third of the province’s voters were registered.
Local political officials serve as ward leaders for national
candidates, supplying them with votes through vote-buying, vote
padding and shaving. National officials would return the favor by
supporting local politicians in whatever they wanted to do in the
province, or by turning a blind eye to their excesses.
The system was supposed to change in the 2010 elections with
the introduction of automated voting and canvassing. The new
system ruled out the use of old practices where local leaders could
manipulate the outcome during the long process of counting and
canvassing votes, and in the process sow fear and terror in the
community.
In a way, the automated elections did help ease tensions and
reduce election violence. “The fast transmission of election results
cooled down the people’s temper,” said Dennis Agtay, campaign
director of Umali’s Unang Sigaw Partido ng Pagbabago, shortly
after the May 10 elections. “Because of the speedy transmission of
results, most losing candidates readily accepted defeat, believing
that they could not do anything anymore after the results were
announced.”
Agtay cited how his partymate, Servando Hizon, a former
Army general who ran for mayor in Quezon town, dismissed the
thought of protesting soon after learning of his standing in the
race from the automated results.
He explained, “It is during the long period of waiting for
results—that characterized past elections—when losing candidates
lose their temper and resort to violence.”
Election fiascos
B
ut in some areas in Nueva Ecija, the promise of automated
elections was unfulfilled.
On election day, Nueva Ecija’s 1.3 million voters lined
up under the oppressive heat, most of them elbowing each other

searching for their names on the voters’ list, only to be greeted by
defective voting machines.
Superintendent Ricardo Marquez, Nueva Ecija police director,
said there were numerous complaints over defective Precinct
Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines in at least 12 towns.
In Guimba, at least 60 PCOS machines went missing after
election day, some of them brought home by teachers manning
the machines in violation of election procedures. This prompted
former Presidential Adviser for North Luzon Renato V. Diaz to
call on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to run a full
audit in the province because of what he said was the massive
failure of PCOS machines to transmit results since election day.
Diaz, a candidate for congressman in the first district, claimed
that 160 of 183 PCOS machines in Nueva Ecija failed to transmit
results. Guimba and Talavera, he said, accounted for more than
134,000 votes that were not digitally transmitted due to defects
in compact flash (CF) cards.
Neither the Comelec nor Smartmatic, the firm that supplied
the machines, were able to explain the defects. As a result, election
supervisors proceeded with counting votes manually, with Nueva
Ecija one of the areas with the slowest count.
Apart from the defective machines, authorities received reports
of a new vote-buying tactic employed. While in other provinces
there were reports of voters receiving pre-shaded ballots, in Nueva
Eija, certain local candidates were reported distributing sample
ballots which had holes beside the candidates’ names. Voters
were instructed to place this sample ballot atop the real ballots
and to shade the oval beneath the hole. Attempts to distribute
these sample ballots were, however, thwarted when a watcher of
the rival candidate reported it to a local radio program. No arrest
was reported.
The Philippine National Police described the conduct of voting
as “generally peaceful” if not for petty untoward incidents like the
shooting of a supporter of a Gapan City mayoral candidate, the
noise barrage in San Antonio town hall and reports of “gapangan”
(last-minute vote-buying) in various places on election eve.

Liberal Party presidential candidate Benigno

Aquino III chooses vote-rich Nueva Ecija for
his first provincial sortie.

Incumbent Mayor Alvin Vergara loses to his
cousin, former Mayor Julius Cesar Vergara,
in the Cabanatuan City mayoral race.

In Talavera town, a police checkpoint intercepted two tricycle-

riding men carrying guns, and in Lupao town a bodyguard of
mayoral candidate De Guzman was gunned down the week
before elections.
Bongabon town Mayor Beth Gamilla reported that a
supporter of Gov. Aurelio Umali tried to strangle Barangay Curva
councilman Renato Francisco while he was voting, but that
Umali’s supporter was eventually forced out of the precinct.
Most of these incidents, however, never reached the national
media; hence the image that all was relatively quiet in Nueva
Ecija.
New approach, new actors
T
hese incidents support the view that election-related
violence in Nueva Ecija has disappeared from the centers,
pushed to the towns and barangays.
“Violence became dispersed and expanded to include actors
other than the politicians directly involved in the electoral race,”
said the Ateneo study. It also noted that lately, most of the
reported killings in the province happened at the local level, with
barangay officials as casualties.
Monta has a parallel view: “Those at the town level could
provide the fireworks. We have to keep watch on the politicians’
wards who are prone to exhibit the macho mentality, where a
minor provocation could lead to something violent. A small spark
can turn into a conflagration.”
What is considered the last of the high-profile election-
related violent incidents happened three years ago in Jaen town.
Mayor Antonio Esquivel’s bodyguard-driver, Senior Police Officer
1 Roberto Ferrer, and candidate for councilor Leonardo Galang
died in a fierce firefight between the feuding camps of Esquivel
and congressman Rodolfo Antonino. More than 20 others,
among them civilians, were wounded in a shootout that news
reports called the bloodiest in the 2007 election campaign.
Esquivel and Antonino are among the new actors on Nueva

Ecija’s political stage. They operate in the province’s fourth
district which includes the traditionally violence-prone town of
Jaen. Elsewhere in the province, other players have emerged, like
the Borjas and the Ueras in Pantabangan, and the Dela Cruzes
and the Bues in Gabaldon.
Peripheral violence, city rivalries
T
he diffusion of violence to the peripheries, particularly
to far-off towns and barangays is what academics call the
new form of violence in Nueva Ecija. But then again, Nueva
Ecija’s history shows that political violence in remote areas has
been a feature of elections long before the Joson-Perez rivalry
began. Among the cases of election-related violence that took
place in the fringe towns:
n Shortly after the 1967 local elections, then newly elected mayor
Antonio Vilar of Bongabon town miraculously survived a bullet that

entered his right temple and exited through the left – rendering
him totally blind. Bongabon lies in the eastern fringes of the
province near Aurora. At the time of the slay try, Vilar was preparing
for his assumption to office the following January.
n In September 1968, Mayor Benjamin Aves of Peñaranda town
likewise survived what the police called a “politically motivated”

assassination attempt where both his thighs were pierced by
bullets. Peñaranda lies in the southeastern edge of Nueva Ecija, not
far from neighboring Bulacan.
n In January 1985, Mayor Rogelio Lagmay of Zaragoza town and
three of his aides were gunned down in his office while he was
having a heated discussion with acting mayor Artemio Pagaduan.
The principal suspect was Pagaduan’s driver-bodyguard, Arcadio
Reyes. Zaragosa is located near the boundary of Nueva Ecija and
Tarlac in the southwest.
n In January 1989, Cabiao Vice Mayor Ricardo Campos was shot dead
inside his house by a gun-for-hire known locally as “Rambo.” Cabiao, in

the southwest, shares borders with the province of Pampanga.

n On June 1, 1994, in the northwestern town of Lupao near the
Nueva Ecija-Pangasinan border, candidate for mayor Danilo

Vendevil and two of his aides were killed by armed men allegedly
identified with then mayor George Castaneda.
n On the same day, in the town of Jaen located in the southwest
of the province, mayoral aspirant Ricardo Velarde, then a barangay

captain, was gunned down. The primary suspect was then mayor
Antonio Prospero Esquivel.
n Also in Jaen, in December 1998, fire gutted the town hall, including
the treasurer’s office where contested ballot boxes were kept. The
ballot boxes were about to be transported to the Gapan regional trial
court where a protest filed by Esquivel against rival Cesar Eduardo who
unseated him in the previous polls was being heard.
And then again, it was not only the Josons and the Perezes
who were fighting it out in the cities of Nueva Ecija.
In May 1976, armed men sprayed with bullets the car of
Palayan City Mayor Elpidio Cucio, but he surprisingly escaped
unhurt. Palayan City, which is 12 kilometers northeast of
Cabanatuan City, is Nueva Ecija’s official provincial capital.
In October 1984, Cucio’s son Rolando, who was then a
Cabanatuan City councilor, was waylaid while on his way home
in the city’s Kapitan Pepe Subdivision. His secretary, Florencio
Callo, was also seriously wounded in the incident.
In December 1987, Rizal town mayoral candidate Antonio
Limos was found dead with a bullet wound on his forehead,
in his own house. Police records show that his death was the
handiwork of “hired killers who used a gun with silencer.” Rizal
is bounded by the northeastern towns of Bongabon, Llanera and
Pantabangan and the northern city of San Jose.
Bloody 2007 polls
C
ompared to previous elections, however, the 2007
polls had the most widespread cases of election-related
violence, when 17 towns and cities were declared as

hotspots, prompting the Comelec to again place the province
under its control, just like in the 2004 elections. Nueva Ecija has
27 towns and five cities. The recorded violent incidents before,
during and after the elections.
In Gapan City in November 2006, five died when a grenade,
suspected to be aimed at businessman Rodrigo Pascual, exploded
inside a cockpit arena. Pascual escaped unhurt, but three of his
sons and two family friends died in the incident. He persisted in
running for mayor but lost.
The following month in Cabanatuan City, Augusto Santiago,
the chairman of the Association of Barangay Captains, was felled
by bullets also inside a cockpit arena.
In early April 2007 in Licab town, a candidate for municipal
councilor, Ariel dela Merced, was shot dead in a wedding
reception.
And on April 17, 2007, the infamous shootout between the
men of Esquivel and Antonino in Jaen took place.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer, in reporting the Jaen mayhem,
described it graphically: “Thought by some to be firecrackers,
the intense firing lasted no more than five minutes but was so
ferocious that eight vehicles were peppered with bullets. Some
candidates, fearing for their lives, jumped off the campaign stage,
leaped over a fence and fell into a pigpen.”
In Talugtug town a week later, barangay captain Liberato
Ramos and two of his village officials were ambushed in Barangay
Saverona. The victims were then campaigning for Mayor Pacifico
Monta.
In Quezon town five days before the elections, Ernesto
Macario, a driver of mayoral bet Dennis Alejandro, was killed in
barangay Dulong Bayan. Alejandro accused his rival, reelectionist
mayor Dale Joson, son of then incumbent vice governor and
gubernatorial candidate Mariano Cristino Joson, as behind the
slaying.
In San Isidro town at about the same time, Alex Mempin, a
barangay councilman and known supporter of mayoral candidate
Sonia Lorenzo, was gunned down by a lone motorcycle-riding

assailant. Lorenzo’s camp accused her rival candidate and nephew

Cris Villareal as behind it.
Media counted at least a dozen fatalities in election-related
violent incidents in Nueva Ecija in the runup to the 2007 polls.
A subculture of violence within a

culture of nonviolence
A
s the ERV cases show, the propensity for violence appears
confined to Nueva Ecija’s political elites. The average Novo
Ecijano is not predisposed to violence and has become less
reliant on, even “disinterested” in politics, largely owing to the
province’s growing affluence.
“(People) may not be bothered by their political situation
because of the varied opportunities that are available in Nueva
Ecija. Also because of this, politics is not seen as a source of
livelihood,” said the Ateneo School of Government. “People do
not see immediate benefits of their participation or they don’t see
the relevance of themselves getting involved (in politics).”
The result is an odd blend of a subculture of violence
among elites and politicians going against the general culture of
nonviolence in this first-class Central Luzon province, so unlike
provinces that are poor and preoccupied with politics like Abra.
Polling residents of eight Nueva Ecija towns, the Ateneo study
found that 72 percent acknowledge that election-related violence
occurs in their province and slightly more than half consider it
a problem. But seven in 10 trust the authorities—be they local,
police or military—to find a solution to poll violence.
Most Novo Ecijanos would rather shun violence, according
to the study. Eight in 10 reject the use of violence to protect
themselves from enemies, to get back at those who have wronged
them, and even to further their advantage. Three in four don’t
believe they ought to arm themselves for self-protection.
But the study also cites incongruencies in the residents’
attitude toward election violence.
While 87 percent say they will report cases of election-related

violence and 75 percent claim to be ready to testify, the reality is,
ERV cases in Nueva Ecija are unresolved. Worse, 73 percent of
Novo Ecijanos consider the issue as government’s sole concern.
“(ERV cases) are not reported, and nobody wants to serve as
witnesses. It goes to show that their values do not translate into
action which eventually results to their disengagement,” said the
study. “Worse, they develop a sense of complacency making them
divorced and disinterested from politics.”
Civil society initiatives
I
n the 2010 elections, the Comelec and the PNP formed
Task Force Nueva Ecija to join church and people’s initiatives
to stem the upsurge of election-related violence in the
province.
The provincial Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible
Voting (PPCRV) also organized the “Tipan ng Kapayapaan,”
a peace covenant intended to help ensure honest, orderly and
peaceful elections in rites held at Maria Assumpta Seminary in
Cabanatuan City.
Local parishes also held peace processions and vigils on
the eve of the national elections, on election day, and after the
elections while awaiting controversial results and updates about
the “missing” PCOS machines, particularly in San Jose City and
Guimba town.
Likewise, the Gapan City local government unit declared the
Gapan City Hall a “no firearms zone,” after an incident involving
a brother of the outgoing city mayor who barged into the local
Comelec office and bodily harmed a Comelec official over a voter
registration issue. The declaration was an attempt to prevent the
escalation of the incident.
And in Bongabon town, Mayor Amelia Gamilla urged the
PPCRV to scrap a planned candidates’ forum because, if not
handled well, it could be divisive and even spark violence among
the candidates and their supporters.

Vigilance and complacency
‘I
n spite all these, we should continue to be always on our
toes; we should not be complacent. Political rivalries can
still heat up even long after the polls, because of deep-
seated motives, although I hope this will not happen,” Monta
said.
Monsignor Elmer Mangalinao of the St. Nicholas de Tolentine
Church in Cabanatuan City believes that the church helped create
a headway in the peace process.
Jaen parish priest Fr. Aldrin Domingo, who also heads the
province’s PPCRV, was happy with the ensuing tranquility.
“Initially, I was quite apprehensive that the diffusion of power
and decentralization of conflict in Nueva Ecija could become
more problematic, but it seems that it is turning out well.”
Ciencia added, “Novo Ecijanos are a generally peace-loving
people. We may be quite fond of needling one another, but
otherwise, we are averse to violence. And I hope this peace will
last long; better still, I hope it will be for good.”
—With Ben Domingo Jr. and Ronald Evaristo

Election Watchlist Areas in Nueva Ecija
1 Cabanatuan City
2 Carrangalan
3 Gabaldon (Bitulok and Sabani)
4 Gapan
5 General Mamerto Natividad
6 Guimba
7 Jaen
8 Lupao
9 Nampicuan
10 Palayan City
11 Pantabangan
12 Quezon
13 Rizal
14 San Isidro
15 San Jose City
16 Santa Rosa
17 Santo Domingo

A newly created group, The Special Task Force Masbate, is composed of a
3,000-strong army of military and police officers.
Photo by Masbate Advocates for Peace

MASBATE
‘Lifelines’ for
political survival
By Artha Kira Paredes
W
hen the Philippine National Police’s
Task Force Masbate set up round-the-clock
checkpoints in the province during the May
2010 elections, they would stop all vehicles
for inspection. No one was spared, not even
high-ranking provincial politicians belonging to a prominent
clan known to maintain a private army.
The politicians did not like being flagged down, much less
having their vehicle examined. So they called a former Mindanao
congressman for help, sources said.
The congressman’s bailiwick was hundreds of kilometers
south of Masbate, but he was soon on the phone with Masbate’s
police director, asking him why his men were harassing an “ally.”
The director had no choice but to apologize.
Artha Kira Paredes is a freelance journalist who has written extensively on

Abra’s peace and order situation. She grew up in Abra thinking it was normal
to carry a gun around.

The police have coined a term for these meddlers. They are
“lifelines,” who serve the same purpose as a safety net to break
one’s fall, or a rope to pull at to save oneself from drowning. The
term became popular after the hit television game show “Who
wants to be a millionaire” used it to refer to a menu of options a
contestant could take whenever faced with a difficult question.
In Philippine politics, “lifelines” are political fixers with the
power to assist clients who have run afoul of the law; they have
become more accessible with modern technology, specifically
through the use of cellular phones.
This former Mindanao congressman, a stalwart of the party
then in power and said to be very close to the previous president,
was just one of the many “lifelines” politicians in Masbate call
whenever they want the police off their backs. And politicians
turn to these “lifelines” for other activities as well. Sources said
these include getting their bodyguards and goons off the hook
after they commit a crime and helping illegal fishers evade
arrest.
Among the other “lifelines” whose “help” is sought are local
politicians themselves and former and incumbent lawmakers
from Metro Manila, and another one from a prominent political
family in the Bicol region.
The call made to the provincial director was not the first time
the former Mindanao congressman, who ran and lost in his bid
to become senator in 2007, “meddled” with local issues, sources
from Masbate revealed. Elections are also not the only time that
“lifelines” are used in the province, an island so rich in marine
life that, sources said, even big-time sardine companies from
Zamboanga, Negros, Cebu, Navotas and Lucena engage in illegal
fishing in its waters.
Sources alleged that local officials are themselves the lifelines
of illegal fishing groups who pay them at least P2 million a
month for immunity. Lifelines are one reason more than half of
Masbate’s people live in poverty despite the province’s bountiful
seas, sources lamented.
Masbate, which has a population of just under 800,000, is

MASBATE: ‘Lifelines’ for political survival
ranked the Philippines’ eighth poorest province, with more than

half its population living in poverty in 2006. Since 2000, it has
been consistently listed among the poorest 10, even topping the
list in 2000 with a poverty incidence of 63.1 percent.
The province has a little less than 400,000 registered voters,
according to the National Statistics and Coordination Board. It
has also been a consistent hotspot during elections.
Several high-profile incidents of election violence have taken
place here over the years. The nongovernment Vote Peace, in its
book 2010 National and Local Election Peace Breakthrough, listed
some of the prominent Masbate personalities who fell victim to
politically motivated attacks: Congressman Moises Espinosa Sr. in
1989; his brother, Congressman Tito Espinosa, in 1995; his son,
Mayor Moises Espinosa Jr., in 2001; Governor Jolly Fernandez
in 1991 whose brother Artemio was killed in 1986, and former
Congressman Fausto Seachon Jr. in 2005.
In a survey conducted by the nongovernment Coalition for
Bicol Development from November to December 2009, 1,800
respondents all over the six provinces of the Bicol region were
asked about election-related violence.
One of the survey’s main findings is that majority of
Masbatenos perceive that more election-related violence (ERV)
occurs in their province than elsewhere in Bicol.
The same study showed that people perceive ERV in Bicol to be
caused mainly by the perpetrator’s desire to win the election (36.1
percent) and political squabbles (27.6 percent). Other reasons
respondents cited were envy (7.6 percent); selectively victimized/
piqued (5.4 percent); poverty/need for money (4.2 percent);
threats/intimidation (3.9 percent); revenge (0.6 percent) and an
abusive military (0.3 percent).
The “lifelines” explain in part why violence persists in
Masbate. It is likely that other politicians in election hotspots
elsewhere have their own counterpart lifelines, which account for
the problem of impunity in the country. It explains why private
armies never get disbanded, why killers are never charged or even
identified, and why masterminds are never found. The lifelines,

and impunity, are just a phone call away.
These “lifelines” also partly explain why the public perceive
the police to be ineffective in the face of recurring violence.
Doing their jobs would merely earn them the ire of the lifelines,
as in the case of a Criminal Investigation and Detection Group
(CIDG) officer who in 2007 led the raid on the house of a Masbate
mayor’s son on suspicion of illegal possession of firearms.
Sources then wondered why, instead of being promoted,
the officer was relieved of his duties. They later learned that the
mayor’s political ally had called a Masbate congressman, who in
turn rang a prominent political patriarch, who simply dialed the
police headquarters in Camp Crame in Quezon City to have the
CIDG officer transferred.
The situation reached the point that policemen just paid lip
service to campaigns for peace. One PNP official even admitted
that policemen asked their superiors what stance to take toward
Task Force Masbate and the campaigns against election violence:
“kung lalaruin o seseryosohin (whether to just play along or take
the task force seriously).”
In the 2010 elections, the first automated nationwide
elections in the country, the Masbate police were told to take
things seriously, hence the run-in with the politicians at the
checkpoint. The PNP leadership formed Task Force Masbate in
early 2010 to prevent further electoral violence and to dismantle
private armies. It was an effort to replicate what then PNP Chief
Jesus Verzosa saw as a “success story” in Abra, another violence-
prone province, in 2006.
In elections past, “lifelines” helped Masbate politicians and
their followers get away with both minor and major offenses. In
the 2010 elections, the police say, lifelines had no impact.
On election day, there was no recorded ERV, but between
January 2009 and January 2010, police records compiled by
Masbate Advocates of Peace show that several ambushes,
including that of then Governor Elisa Kho’s, took place as well as
the murder of several political supporters.

Perceived ERV incidence in city/municipality

in the Bicol Region
CAMARINES CAMARINES
BICOL ALBAY CATANDUANES MASBATE SORSOGON
NORTE SUR
Ambush/
6.3 5.3 0.0 2.0 3.0 23.7 3.7
shooting
Bombing/
Grenade 0.8 0 0 0 0.3 4.7 0
attack
Harassment/
4.3 3.0 0.3 1.7 4.0 15.0 1.7
Intimidation
Burning/Arson 0.4 0.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.7 0.3
Hostage
taking/ 0.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.7 1.0 0.0
Kidnapping
Physical
assault/ 0.9 0.7 0.0 1.0 1.0 3.0 0.0
stabbing
Rumble/
2.5 3.3 1.7 1.7 1.7 5.3 1.3
melee
Vandalism/
property 0.8 0.3 0.3 0.7 0.7 2.3 0.7
destruction
Robbery/
1.1 1.0 0.0 2.0 0.7 3.0 0.0
Burglary
Ballot
snatching/ 2.3 3.0 0.7 2.0 1.0 6.0 1.0
switching
Geographical
19.7 17.0 3.0 11.0 13.0 66.0 9.0
incidence
Provincial
share of 100.0 14.0 2.0 9.0 11.0 56.0 8.0
incidence
Source: Coalition for Bicol Development

Lifelines and Gloria Arroyo
A
lthough lifelines trace their beginnings to the
Philippine padrino (patronage) system, Masbate sources
observed that these were most frequently used during the
term of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Arroyo first assumed the presidency in 2001, taking over
from Joseph Estrada who was ousted by a People Power revolt.
But questions over the legitimacy of her presidency dogged her
early years, and in 2004 she sought legitimacy by running for
election.
“(Arroyo) had to depend on local politicians to deliver votes.
So she gave in to whatever they asked from her, and in exchange,
local politicians delivered votes,” a source said.
Arroyo had her own lifeline in Virgilio Garcillano, a
commissioner of the Commission on Elections, whom she
called several times while the votes were being counted in
2004, ostensibly to get him to pad the votes in her favor. The
recorded conversations between the two and among several other
personalities became the big scandal the following year that came
to be known as “Hello, Garci.”
In the case of the former Mindanao congressman, it is
believed that his plans of running for the Senate made him a
more-than-willing lifeline, a political fixer interceding in behalf
of local politicians and extricating them out of problematic
situations, in exchange for their votes.
National politicians seem to have much to gain from local
politicians as lifelines, but University of the Philippines cultural
anthropologist Nestor Castro sees these local politicians as those
who have more to gain from such relationship.
“All those running for a national (post) need to court them,
and they (local politicians) play along, sometimes to the point
of becoming balimbing (having no loyalty to any candidate),”
he said. The national politicians also tolerate existing dynasties
and warlords at the local level because the former need them to

deliver votes, he explained.

He described the relationship as a “web,” temporary in nature
and lasting only as long as parties stand to gain something from
the relationship.
“No one is indispensible. If the ward leader fails, then he will
be replaced and the padrino shifts,” he said.
For now, Task Force Masbate has a clean record and no
reports have been made yet on the new set of Masbate officials
using lifelines, especially with the change of administration from
Arroyo to her successor, Benigno Aquino III. If there’s anything
from which trouble could emanate, sources said, it the presence
of the task force which the new set of Masbate officials want
abolished to stop the arrest of illegal fishers.
The shift in power at the national level, according to sources,
has also meant a shift on local politicians making use of lifelines.
Cagayan Valley is the next province to watch in terms of the
frequency of lifeline usage, or so they say.

How Masbatenos perceive poverty,
quality of life and the elections
Percentage of self-rated poverty 84 percent (The highest among the six Bicol provinces)
Have experienced hunger at least 47 percent (The highest among the Bicol provinces and
once and had nothing to eat in the even higher than the region’s average of 32 percent)
past three months
Frequency of hunger 30 percent answered “often”
29 percent answered “always”

Life in the past five years 41 percent answered “worse now”
35 percent answered “same as before”
24 percent answered “better now”

Life in the next three years 44 percent answered “become better”
43 percent answered “the same”
8 percent answered “become worse”

Participation in the 2007 elections 90.7 percent (third highest in Bicol and higher than the
region’s 88.8 percent average
Vote-buying awareness 59.7 percent

Vote-buying as a trend 72.8 percent (the highest among the provinces)
Engage in vote-buying “out of need” 62.6 percent
See vote buying as a “blessing” 24 percent
Approached to buy vote 31 percent
Did you take the money? 71 percent answered “yes”
Reason for not taking the money 84.6 percent “do not want to be beholden or indebted or
feel obligated”
Voted for the candidate that paid for 86.4 percent (the highest among the provinces)
their votes
Approached to be given goods and 11 percent
services

Multisectoral groups hold a peace caravan to end

political violence on this pistol-shaped island.

As part of its peace efforts, only two security
personnel are allowed per politician.

Election Watchlist Areas in Masbate

1 Aroroy
2 Balud
3 Batuan
4 Cataingan
5 Cawayan
6 Claveria
7 Dimasalang
8 Esperanza
9 Milagros
10 Palanas
11 Pio V. Corpuz (Limbuhan)
12 Placer
13 San Fernando
14 San Pascual
15 Uson

The chicken and
cow strategy
By Avigail M. Olarte
M
asbate is no In Masbate, one of
Orwellian farm, the poorest provinces,
politics is ruled by the
but a chicken and power of a gun. Photo
a cow saved this by Masbate Advocates
province from what for Peace
could have been its bloodiest election in

recent history.
That animals could revolt against man and overthrow
abusive authorities was not exactly the case. It is what they
symbolize, fashioned after their very biology, that led to the idea
of the famous Manok (chicken) and Baka (cow) Strategy.

Members of Masbate The Masbate Advo-
Advocates for Peace cates for Peace (MAP),
a Church-led multi-sec-
Diocese of Masbate Social Action Foundation (DIMASAFI) toral initiative, coined
Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting the term for its goal of
Commission on Elections ending the culture of
violence that has lasted
Rotary Club
for more than 50 years.
Knights of Columbus
The Church’s Social
Masbate Business Leaders Inc.
Action Group director,
Cattle Raisers Association Fr. Leo Casas, who
Masbate Bankers Association continued the initial
Kusog Batan-on work of Bishop Joel
Kiwanis Baylon in 2007, believed
Gawad Kalinga in the two-pronged
Masbate Medical Society
strategy.
The Manok strategy
Special Task Force Masbate
focused on plans that
Source: Ateneo School of Government could be immediately
implemented while the
Baka strategy was to be
used for post-election, to check on officials and their platforms
and the implementation of their programs.
“Manok for the short-term plans because it’s easy to grow
chickens. Also, MAP was formed 45 days before the elections,
just like a 45-day-old chick,” Casas said. “Baka for the long-term
plans because cows are more difficult and it takes longer to raise
them.”
The result of this creative scheme: Masbate posted the lowest
ever recorded number of election-related violence incidents
(ERVIs) in its poll history and zero incident on election day.
A 2010 study on Masbate of the Ateneo School of
Government noted that MAP “recognized the prevailing culture
of indifference among Masbatenos and knew the situation was
ripe to engage civil society in initiatives against election-related
violence.”

One of the most high profile election-related violence cases
includes the rich ranchers of Masbate, the Espinosas. This clan
has dominated Masbate politics for decades. The first death in
the family was in 1989, when Congressman Moises Espinosa
was gunned down seconds after he stepped off the plane at
the Masbate airport. Years later, his brother, Congressman Tito
Espinosa, was murdered at the doors of Congress. Moises’s son,
Moises Jr., was peppered with bullets during a town fiesta in
2001. The Espinosas, who lost heavily in the 2007 elections, are
fierce rivals of the Khos, an equally well-entrenched family in
the province.
Raring to break the cycle of violence, the group—composed
of Church groups, election watchdogs, business groups, and the
military and the police—strategized and had roles cut out for
each sector.
The Church rallied for public support and used “peace
offerings” for its campaign, business groups donated money for
the cause, the media helped through voter education via print
and radio, and motorcades and peace caravans were held.
Two major peace caravans were held—Walk for MY HOME
(Masbateños Yearning for Honest, Orderly and Meaningful
Elections for 2010) and A Walk for HOPE—joined by various
groups.
The Church also led prayer vigils for a peaceful election. The
group distributed leaflets and flyers, and launched an “infotext”
campaign that allowed people to report any election-related
violence incident, especially those related to private armed
groups and the use of loose firearms.
But most crucial to this campaign was the partnership with
the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Philippine National
Police (PNP) and the Joint Security Control Centers (JSSC).
The JSSC, set up in all PNP offices nationwide to address
election-related security issues, had the highest-ranking
Commission on Elections (Comelec) official as its head and the
highest ranking PNP and AFP officials as members.
The PNP also created Task Force Masbate in January 2010,

Loose firearms putting the province
in the Bicol Region under a special
police watch. One
New Baseline of the main tasks of
Province Baseline (2010) the JSSC and Task
Albay 6,359 5,584 Force Masbate was
to go after private
Camarines Norte 2,921 2,672 armies and confiscate
firearms.
Camarines Sur 8,144 7,456
PNP records
Catanduanes 1,392 1,327 show that as of April
2010 there were
Masbate 4,159 3,575 107 private armed
groups (PAGs) in the
Sorsogon 3,493 3,226
country. The Bicol
Naga City 2,119 2,031 region is the second
highest, next to the
Source: PNP Autonomous Region
in Muslim Mindanao
(20). Of the 16 PAGs
in the region, 11 are in Masbate.
The result of the series of consultations and forums of MAP
with top-ranking military and police officials and politicians
paid off.
Before election day, over 50 high-powered firearms were
surrendered to Task Force Masbate. The firearms—machine guns,
rifles, grenade launchers, and pistols—were reportedly owned by
three longtime political rivals: the Khos, Lanetes and Bravos.
Then Masbate Governor Eliza Kho was the first to voluntarily
surrender firearms.
While there are hundreds more loose firearms that have yet
to be confiscated, the police considered this a “sincere effort”
among opposing politicians to reduce violence. Of the 28,587
loose firearms in the region, 4,159 are in Masbate.
All in all, the efforts of the civil society in Masbate resulted
in a significant decrease of ERVIs. From 67 incidents in 2001,

the number was brought down to 12 in 2010, or a decrease of 82
percent. The number of victims of ERVIs from 2004 to 2010 was
also reduced by 53 percent, or from 28 victims down to 13.
Although compared to other provinces in the country,
Masbate still had one of the highest recorded ERVIs and number
of victims in 2010.
Still, “the creation of MAP is considered a breakthrough
in local politics being the first ever multisectoral organization
formed for that purpose,” Ateneo said. “The fact that the
province experienced less violence in the past 2010 elections,
and that pre-election initiatives of MAP have been successful so
far, gives Masbate high hopes that, yes, it can be done.”

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Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 1

Yvonne T. Chua and Luz D. Rimban

Copyright @ 2011 VERA Files Incorporated

Published by THE ASIA FOUNDATION – Philippines

All rights reserved.

Cover and book design: Eduardo A. Davad

LANAO DEL SUR................................................... 56

NUEVA ECIJA......................................................... 152

Breaking the cycle

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xi

xii democracy at gunpoint

Problematic time frame

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xiii

Motives, victims, perpetrators

xiv democracy at gunpoint

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xv

“…groups of three (3) or more armed men who may not be

Oplan Paglalansag also distinguished private armies from rebel

xvi democracy at gunpoint

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xvii

xviii democracy at gunpoint

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xix

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines xxi

Carolyn O. Arguillas is editor in chief of MindaNews, the news service arm of a

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 1

For one, it was the brainchild of former three-term governor Andal

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 3

Matalam became like a second father to MNLF chairman

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 5

to and following the election, the Ampatuans were allegedly

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 7

because (he gets) political favors from the national government,”

Ampatuan and Arroyo

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 9

A joint police-military team

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 11

When the scandal resulted in calls for Arroyo’s ouster,

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 13

elections in February 2008 showed that two out of three voters in

The ‘Ampatuan Massacre’

A total of 197 persons have been implicated in the massacre,

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 15

Former Datu Unsay Mayor Andal

Months later, with at least six leaders of the Ampatuan clan in

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 17

Mangudadatus. Sangki’s son, Rasul, is a state witness in the

Mangudadatu’s uneasy victory

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 19

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 21

“The hold of that man in traditional areas (is still) uncontested,”

Yearlong state of emergency

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 23

Defense and the Interior and Local Government. “There is still

Also in June, Ferrer, then chief of EastMinCom and

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 25

Election Watchlist Areas in Maguindanao

By Artha Kira Paredes

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 31

on the behest of someone bitter about the election results, and he

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 33

Mario Acena, 33, a supporter of Bangued

Election-Related Violence in the Philippines 35

Armed groups prop up rivalries