Gensanportal - Mindanao News Blog

A female Mindanao lawmaker, Cotabato Rep. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza questioned the proposed 30-percent expansion of the territory of the ARMM under a new memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain set to be signed by the government and MILF.

Under the proposed memorandum, Taliño-Mendoza said up to 712 barangays that currently do not belong to the ARMM would be “annexed” to the self-governing region.

At present, the ARMM has a total of 2,470 barangays in Marawi City and 111 municipalities across six provinces – Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Shariff Kabunsuan.

Taliño-Mendoza said government and MILF negotiators “should stop using Mindanao villages, whether chiefly Christian or Muslim, as pawns to be playfully bargained away.”

“Have government negotiators bargained away the whole store? How many times to we have to capitulate just to appease the MILF? How many plebiscites do we have to conduct just to satisfy them?”

Taliño-Mendoza asked.

The Mindanao lawmaker also urged government negotiators to “fully disclose” every detail of the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain drafted by both the government and MILF peace panels in Kuala Lumpur.

“The people of Mindanao are entitled to know the fine points of the proposed new accord now, even before it is signed by both parties,” Taliño-Mendoza said.

“We are Filipinos born and raised in Mindanao. We deserve to know exactly what the government negotiators promised the MILF, and precisely what the MILF pledged in return… It is bad enough negotiators never consulted us from the start. Now, it turns out that some of our villages were apparently reduced as bargaining chips in the talks,”

she added. – GMANews.TV