P200,000 scholarship grant given to relatives of massacre victims

GENERAL SANTOS CITY , Philippines  – Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales met with the families of the victims of the Nov. 23 Maguindanao massacre at an undisclosed place yesterday morning, it was learned.

Gonzales was said to have been en route to Maguindanao in a supposed secret breakfast meeting with leaders and legal counsels of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front at Camp Darapanan, reportedly on an interim agreement on governance being contemplated between the government and the MILF.

Interior and Local Government Assistant Secretary Guimid Matalam said he was to accompany Gonzales in a meeting with lawyers Michael Mastura and Musib Buat, MILF legal panel, and Mohaguer Iqbal, MILF peace panel chairman.

Later, Gonzales met here with families of the Maguindanao massacre victims, with a P200,000 scholarship package President Arroyo had earlier promised them, sources said.

“Thank God, President Arroyo appears to be fulfilling her promise to us (victims’ families). I pray that the real culprits, not the fall guys, would finally be sentenced by the courts,” Merle Perante of the Heirs of the 11/23 Heroes, told reporters.

Muhammad Jun Mantawil, chair of the MILF panel secretariat, said his group was not averse to signing the interim agreement as it would ensure continuity of the peace process after Mrs. Arroyo’s term ends on June 30.

For his part, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Raphael Seguis, government peace panel chair, said an interim agreement would focus on Moro governance, a major component of a proposed Compact Peace Pact with the MILF.

But the CPP may not be possibly signed in the last two months of the Arroyo administration, both Seguis and Mantawil had said in separate statements.

Mantawil said the MILF wanted the creation of a high governing body to constitute a transitional structure of a Bangsamoro Juridical Entity, which will oversee Moro governance over Muslim areas.

These will encompass the five provinces and one city comprising the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), plus six towns of Lanao del Norte, which voted overwhelmingly for an expanded autonomy in a plebiscite held in January 2000.

Lobby group

“The meeting was kept under wraps to keep the substantial results from peace saboteurs,” said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The source added that a “lobby group” from the ARMM was talking to local media as well as to Gonzales and National Police Director-General Jesus Versosa to dissuade the Department of Justice from dismissing a murder conspiracy charge against detained ARMM Governor Zaldy Ampatuan.

“But the move might affect peace transition arrangements with the MILF, because there are some vested interest to keep acting (ARMM) officials in power to the detriment of the peace talks,” the same source said.

Matalam also confirmed that there were efforts to keep current ARMM officials in acting capacity, saying some of them had even questioned the legality of the President’s Administrative Order Numbers 273 and 273-A, which placed the autonomous region under the administrative control of the DILG, not the Office of the President as required under its charter, Republic Acts 6734 and 9054.

Reached for comment at his detention cell here, Ampatuan said appointed officials should look beyond the ARMM for the peace efforts to succeed, bringing to mind that he also promised in the past to give way regardless of the outcome of the peace talks.

An Ampatuan legal counsel said he was hopeful the DOJ would deem it impossible for one person to be in Manila and Maguindanao at the same time on Nov. 23.

“We have asked the DOJ to review the prosecution’s amended case which included the ARMM governor, who was in Malacañang at the time of the incident,” lawyer Sonny Avila said.

Citing a news report by another daily on Nov. 24, then Presidential Political Adviser Gabby Claudio said Zaldy Ampatuan was attending a meeting in Malacañang the day before the carnage.