CPOC calls on Muslim politicians to stop killing each other

COTABATO CITY — The City Peace and Order Council has called on Muslim politicians in surrounding Maguindanao towns to stop using the city as their traditional "battle ground" where they kill each other in one encounter after another. The CPOC’s appeal was preceded by Friday night’s attack by heavily armed partisans at the house here of Salipongan Dagloc, mayor of Kabuntalan, Maguindanao, which left one of his housemaids dead and two others wounded, one of them his son.

Dagloc, who survived the attack, was quick to blame "politics" as the motive for the attempt on his life.

The armed men just barged into Dagloc’s house and opened fire with M-16 and M-14 assault rifles, killing their maid, Ging-ging Baludan, and wounding two others, one of them Datu Sebastian, the mayor’s son.

Since 1990, a total of 113 people have been killed and more than 30 were maimed in hostilities here involving feuding political camps in Maguindanao, some known for maintaining arsenals of assorted firearms, including M-60 machineguns and shoulder-fired M-79 grenade launchers.

Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, chairman of the CPOC, said planners of the city government are now formulating measures that would limit the number of security escorts politicians can bring with them when they come in from their towns. Local officials in Maguindanao, most of them own houses here, have at least 10 security men trailing them and uses three or even four vehicles when they roam around.

"We are calling on feuding politicians in Maguindanao not to fight here in the city. Please don’t endanger the lives of our people in the city," Sema said in his appeal aired yesterday by Catholic station dxMS, the leading broadcast outfit here.

The incident here last Friday came just months after two political clans figured in a firefight at a residential area here, not far away from the office of Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao Gov. Parouk Hussin, which exacted casualties on both sides.

Since January, nine people, all identified with different political quarters in Maguindanao, were gunned down by suspected guns-for-hire in a spate of seemingly unending saga of vendetta killings here.

Sema said most of those killed in the attacks were involved in bloody clan wars in their towns in Maguindanao.