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Maguindanao town faces leadership vacuum after 'narco mayor' goes into hiding

John Unson - Philstar.com

November 21, 2016 | 4:07pm

Maguindanao town faces leadership vacuum after 'narco mayor' goes into hiding

Herders relocate their cattle away from the town proper of Talitay, locked in a standoff between combined police and military personnel and heavily-armed followers of the town’s missing mayor from whose house authorities found drugs and unlicensed guns last Friday.

JOHN UNSON

MAGUINDANAO — There is hiatus now in the political leadership in Talitay town whose missing mayor is wanted for possession of drugs and whose post a successor is hesitant to take over without written imprimatur.

Barangay folks confirmed on Monday that Mayor Muntassir Sabal of Talitay, Maguindanao has been absent from office for more than two months even prior to Friday’s recovery by policemen and soldiers of shabu and unlicensed firearms in his house in the town center.

He was nowhere in Talitay when authorities raided his house, an operation met with resistance from his armed followers, who eventually scampered away when M520 attack helicopters were called in to fire rockets on their positions.

Sabal’s brother, Abdulwahab, who is vice mayor of Talitay, has been detained since September in connection with his alleged involvement in large-scale drug trafficking.

President Rodrigo Duterte had tagged both of them as "narco-politicians," listed in Malacañang’s roster of large-scale drug traffickers in the country.

Councilors Kamid Buisan and Noraisa Mato, who garnered the highest and second highest number of votes among aspirants for the seats in the Sangguniang Bayan during the May 9, 2016 elections, respectively, are reluctant to take over the posts abandoned by Sabal and his brother.

Buisan and Mato are supposed to assume as mayor and vice mayor of Talitay, respectively, based on a rule of succession stated in the Local Government Code.

They both want a written order to take over the two highest elective posts in the municipality from Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

More than a thousand families were dislocated by Friday’s joint raid of Sabal’s house by hundreds of policemen, agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and personnel of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division (6th ID).

The raiding teams also found drugs in the nearby abandoned houses of Talitay’s now detained vice mayor and a relative, Assemblyman Sidik Ameril of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The ARMM lawmaker has also been absent from the RLA for more than two months now.

Tension remained high in the town center of Talitay owing to stories spreading around that heavily armed followers of Sabal, now in his third and last term as mayor, are just around, as if bracing for an attack.

“I am ready to assume as officer-in-charge of the municipality once I get a written designation from the DILG, with concurrence from the provincial governor of Maguindanao," Buisan said Monday.

The spokesman of the Army’s 6th ID, Lt. Col. Markton Abo, told Talitay residents during a dialogue Monday that the military and the police will remain positioned in strategic spots in the municipality while efforts to address the vacuum in the local government leadership are still underway.

“That is something for the DILG to address. We are here just to ensure the safety of all people in the municipality,” Abo said.

Abo said the police and the military are only after the now missing mayor of Talitay and four other cohorts, including the president of the local association of barangay chairmen.

Tokz Upham, a representative of the ceasefire committee of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), said the anti-narcotics operation here last Friday and the continuing stay of the military in the municipality has the permission of the government and MILF’s joint Coordinating Committee on Cessation of Hostilities.

He said local MILF forces were ordered by their central committee to stand down and cooperate with the police and military’s on-going anti-narcotics operations in Talitay.

Villagers said they are in the middle now of a standoff between combined police and Army personnel now scattered in Talitay and the heavily-armed followers of their missing mayor.