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Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Sultan Kudarat guv barred from security meet
By Edwin G. Espejo
KORONADAL CITY -- Sultan Kudarat Gov. Pakung Mangudadatu was barred from joining a close door security briefing held when President Arroyo visited Koronadal City last Monday.
Mangudadatu, the only Muslim governor in Region 12 and also the chairman of the Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC), said he was not included in the list of local government officials scheduled to meet last Monday with Arroyo in a conference room at the Koronadal gym.
"Maybe because I am a Muslim," the governor told a local radio station in the city.
Although he identified himself as RPOC chairman and governor of Sultan Kudarat, presidential security guards stationed outside the gym did not let him in.
"My request fell on deaf ears," the governor said.
President Arroyo arrived in Koronadal Monday afternoon to confer with local government officials and to console with the victims of Saturday's bombing at the Koronadal public market.
Some 13 people where killed while 40 others were wounded when an improvised explosive device exploded outside the south wing portion of the market building.
Mangudadatu blamed his exclusion from the security briefing to the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) and the Office of South Cotabato Gov. Daisy Avance Fuentes.
The Sultan Kudarat governor claimed he sent his liaison officer to Fuentes and asked that he be included in the meeting.
Mangudadatu said Fuentes herself requested his presence.
"I felt embarrassed. I was there to represent the constituents of Sultan Kudarat, not myself alone."
The governor, incidentally, was elected national president of the Muslim National Leaders Association in a meeting held in Manila last month.
He said the people of Mindanao are already weary of the ongoing war in the countryside and the spate of terrorist attacks in most urban centers in the island.
He urged authorities to refrain from arbitrarily arresting Muslim residents every time a bomb explodes in Mindanao.
"We must not be impulsive and avoid complicating this problem," he stressed.
He also appealed to the Arroyo administration to immediately resume the peace talks with Muslim rebel groups.
"I have seen enough of these senseless killings," he said.
Mangudadatu gathered more than 200 Muslim leaders for a meeting at the Davao Waterfront Hotel in March after Arroyo tasked him to convene them throughout Mindanao to denounce the wave of bombing attacks in the island.
On Monday, however, Mangudadatu was turned away from attending a meeting with Arroyo.
Instead, he denounced his exclusion from the security briefing in several radio stations in Koronadal City.
(May 14, 2003 issue)
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