KIDAPAWAN CITY, Philippines — Residents of Cotabato province are lucky for having a deputy speaker and an assistant majority floor leader together in the House of Representatives, local executives said Saturday.
The duo, Trade Union Congress of the Philippines Party-list Rep. Raymond Democrito Mendoza and Rep. Samantha Santos, were named House deputy speaker and assistant majority floor leader, respectively, just a week ago.
The newly-elected mayor of Midsayap, Rolly Sacdalan, said Saturday Cotabato is assured of a “strong representation” in Congress now that there is a deputy speaker and an assistant majority floor leader from the province.
“It is, for us, a big honor,” Sacdalan said.
A Moro rice trader, Monib Sindatu, said Cotabato is fortunate for having two solons occupying key positions in Congress that they can use to drumbeat issues and concerns besetting the province that needs congressional interventions.
Cotabato, which has three congressional districts, covers 17 towns and more than 40 barangays in this city, the provincial capital.
A Moro leader, Kelly Antao, overseeing for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao its 63 barangay in Cotabato grouped together in 2019 as BARMM’s Special Geographic Area, said Mendoza has been so supportive of the government’s Mindanao peace process.
“His having been made House deputy speaker is good for the peace process,” Antao said.
Most of the 63 BARMM barangays in Cotabato were scenes of bloody clashes between Moro secessionist guerillas and state security forces in the 1970s and, subsequently, during the 2000 all-out war of then President Joseph Estrada versus the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The top leader of the MILF, Ahod Ebrahim, is now chief minister of BARMM, a product of 22 years of peace talks between the group and Malacañang.
“In recent years, the TUCP Party-list extended support to peace-building initiatives of the MILF and the government in Moro areas in Cotabato province,” Antao said.
Mayor Evangeline Guzman of Kabacan told reporters Saturday they are glad that Santos, a neophyte politician who finished a college degree in a university in Australia, became House assistant majority floor leader.
Voters in the first congressional district of Lanao del Sur, that has towns close to Cotabato, were as glad when they learned last week that their congressional representative, Zia Alonto Adiong, was also named House assistant majority floor leader.
Adiong was a member of the now defunct Regional Assembly of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, replaced with BARMM in early 2019.
He was also a member of BARMM’s interim 80-member parliament prior to his election as congressional representative of the 1st district of Lanao del Sur during the May 9, 2022 elections.