COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Gov. Lininding Pangandaman Sr., the third elected chief executive of ARMM, passed away Tuesday dawn.
Pangandaman was a member of the diplomatic community for three decades prior to his election as ARMM governor in 1993..
The ARMM’s Bureau of Public Information, in a statement, said the information was relayed by Pangandaman’s family to the Office of the Regional Governor.
He was in his late 80s, according to relatives.
Pangandaman, who was elected ARMM governor in 1993 and whose term lasted until 1996, was an ethnic Maranaw from Masiu town in the second district of Lanao del Sur.
He had served as ambassador to different Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia, from the late 1960s until the early ‘80s.
Pangandaman, as government negotiator, helped craft the “Tripoli Agreement†between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front.
The agreement, signed in the Libyan capital Tripoli on December 23, 1976, became the main reference, along with the Philippine Constitution, in the crafting of the September 2, 1996 government-MNLF peace accord.
Pangandaman was to seek re-election in the ARMM’s fourth regional electoral exercise in 1996, but withdrew to give way to the candidacy of the MNLF’s founder Nur Misuari, who was elected as the region’s fourth governor virtually unopposed.
Misuari was governor of ARMM until 2001.