Central Mindanao MNLF members receive farming equipment

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Malacañang handed over P25 million worth of brand new farming equipment to the Moro National Liberation Front during a symbolic rite in General Santos City on Tuesday, December 3.

The eight farm tractors, six combine harvesters, a mechanized corn sheller and other equipment were turned over by Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace Reconciliation and Unity to  MNLF officials, led by Bangsamoro Regional Labor Minister Muslimin Sema, in a gathering at the Mindanao State University campus in General Santos City.

Sema is the chairman of the MNLF, which forged a final truce with the national government on Sept. 2, 1996, a product of drawn out  negotiations that officially started in 1976.

Sema on Friday, December 6, told reporters in Cotabato City that the MNLF is grateful to President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and Galvez for the farming equipment grant.

“It is something that MNLF members now thriving in their municipalities, long in peace with the government, need to boost their agricultural productivity,” Sema said.

Galvez and the lawyer Shidik Abantas, chancellor of the state-run MSU in General Santos City, together facilitated Wednesday’s turnover of the P25 million worth farming equipment to the MNLF as part of OPAPRU’s Transformation Program, meant to sustain the productivity of former rebels reintegrated into mainstream society as a result of Malacañang’s peace overture with southern Moro communities.

Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza told reporters on Friday that, as figurehead of the Cotabato Provincial Peace and Order Council and as presiding chairperson of the multi-sector and inter-agency Regional Development Council 12, she supports the joint peace and the community-empowerment initiatives of the office of Galvez and the MNLF.

She said local government units in Cotabato are cooperating on interventions meant to boost the investment potentials in areas in the province that have bastions of the MNLF and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

“This Transformation Program” of the OPAPRU is essential in achieving that goal,” Mendoza said.

Cotabato province is also host to eight newly-created Bangsamoro municipalities that are home to mixed members of the MNLF and the MILF, whose chairman, Ahod Ebrahim, is chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.