MANILA – The male-dominated 24-member Regional Assembly of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) broke tradition by electing the chamber’s first-ever woman speaker.
She is Assemblywoman Rejie Sahali-Generale, one of the three representatives to the assembly from the the island province of Tawi-Tawi, a component member of ARMM along with Sulu, Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao and Marawi City.
There used to be seven members of ARMM with the establishment of the new province of Sharif Kabunsuan but the Supreme Court declared as illegal and unconstitutional its creation by the Regional Assembly, saying it is only the Congress of the Philippines which is empowered to do so.
Generale was the unanimous choice of the members to replace the ailing Pike Mentang who hails from the second district of Maguindanao.
Earlier, the assembly declared the positions of regional speaker and speaker protempore as vacant to the poor health of Mentang. Before that, Generale was the speaker protempore.
With her election, Generale is now the third highest official of ARMM, headed by Governor Zaldy Ampatuan.
The new speaker, a registered nurse by profession, is a daughter of Tawi-Tawi Governor Hadji Sadikul Sahali.
However, the assembly members maintained they did not elect Generale as their speaker because she belongs to one of ARMM’s influential and powerful families.
Instead, they said Generale was elected due to her active involvement in socio-economic activities as well as various peace advocacy programs in the autonomous region.
Chosen to replace Generale as speaker protempore was Assemblyman Ombra Datumanong, the younger brother of Congressman Simeon Datumanong of Maguindanao, the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives for Mindanao and a staunch political ally of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Congress established ARMM as part of the peace agreement signed by the government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) IN 1998.
The agreement also involved the integration into the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police about 5,000 MNLF members who have been assigned mostly to ARMM.
Since its establishment, MNLF officials dominated the political leadership of the autonomous region, with Nur Misuari, the front’s chairman, as the first appointed and later elected ARMM governor.
But in 2004, Zaldy Ampatuan, the scion of a powerful political family in Maguindanao, broke the stranglehold of MNLF leaders by becoming the first non-MNLF member to be elected governor of ARMM.
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