Pikit, Cotabato—The Bangsamoro Government should promptly step in to contain a series of killings now feared to escalate into conflict in old settlements of residents coexisting for over a century.
Member of Parliament Jaafar Apollo Mikhail L. Matalam urged his colleagues in the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) to act fast on the conversion of all 63 barangays, now part of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), into municipal local government units (LGUs).
Presently, the 63 barangays that comprise BARMM’s Special Geographic Areas (SGAs) in Cotabato Province, are left with no municipal councils, no mechanisms to settle local conflict or pass policies and ordinances to preserve law and order, Matalam said.
Local police said it was too early to conclude that the series of killings were related to each other. Each case appeared to be distinct from the others, as shown by an initial investigation.
Matalam has also urged local and police authorities to help halt the killings in this town.
But some residents have expressed fears other parties might fan the situation to escalate into a conflict between Christian and Muslim residents for some vested interests, including politics.
Pikit is a bastion of agricultural settlement areas called “colons” which emanated from Osmena Colony Act of 1913 as legislated by the Philippine Commission, following the American civil government’s issuance of the Public Land Act.
Matalam is the son of the late former Pikit Mayor Datu Udtog Matalam Jr., son of Datu Udtog Matalam, Sr., the grand old man of the undivided Empire Cotabato Province.
In a resolution, he filed Thursday Matalam said the 63 barangays of Cotabato Province have now been “deprived of their identity” for a “(sense of) belonging in a “unique (situation)” as Special Geographic Unit.
Matalam said Section 2(1), Article V of Republic Act No. 11054, otherwise known as the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) “provides the Bangsamoro Government with the power to create, divide, merge, abolish or alter boundaries of municipalities and barangays within its territorial jurisdiction.”
Cotabato Province’s 63 barangays that voted to join the BARMM were effectively carved out by the February 2019 plebiscite from the municipalities of Aleosan, Carmen, Kabacan, Midsayap, Pigcawayan, and Pikit, Matalam noted.
“The challenge of uncertainty and ambivalence is forced upon the constituents of the SGAs, leaving them at loose ends, and still anticipating whether the welfare and protection will be secured and afforded to them,” Matalam said in his resolution.