MANILA – From the looks of it, members of the powerful Ampatuan clan blamed by the government for the massacre of 57 people on November 23 are out to prove they are still a political force to reckon with in their home province of Maguindanao in the coming May elections.
Based on records of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) office in Maguindanao, 68 members of the clan are running for the total 374 elective positions at stake in the province in the coming polls.
These are positions for two members of the House of Representatives, governor, vice governor, 10 provincial board members, 36 mayors, 36 vice mayors and 288 municipal board members or councilors.
The Comelec reported that a total of 879 candidates are vying for these positions, 68 of whom are directly related or by affinity to the Ampatuans while 15 belong to the rival clan of the Mangudadatus.
The two incumbent congressman – Simeon Datumanong, a former justice secretary in the Arroyo administration, and Didagen Dilangalen – are seeking reelection and are identified with the Ampatuans.
Observers noted that with their number of candidates, the Ampatuans, despite the massacre, are apparently determined to maintain their tight political and economic stranglehold on Maguindanao, one of the country’s poorest provinces, for the past nine years.
But their dominance is being challenged by the Mangudadatus and other clans like the Masturas, Sinsuats and Sankis amid fears from the Comelec and the police that the province may emerge as one of the country’s major “hotspots†in the May 10 polls.
In the one-on-one faceoff for governor are the clan patriarch former governor Andal Ampatuan and Esmael Manguddadatu, the vice mayor of the town of Buluan, Maguindanao whose wife and two sisters were among the massacre victims along with 30 Mindanao-based journalists.
In a sudden shift of political alliances, the patriarch is now running as an independent after he and other members of the clan were ousted by the ruling Lakas-Kampi Christian Muslim Democrats as a result of the massacre.
Earlier, reports are that the patriarch was grooming his son and namesake Andal Ampatuan Junior of Datu Unsay town to run against Mangudadatu but this did not materialize due to the massacre.
Mayor Ampatuan is now detained while being tried in a lower court in Metro Manila for allegedly masterminding the bloodbath.
On the other hand, Mangudadatu is the official candidate of Lakas-Kampi, who was proclaimed by the party’s presidential standard bearer former defense secretary Gilberto
Teodoro.
But the patriarch himself could not campaign because he is under detention in a military hospital at the headquarters of the Eastern Mindanao Command in Davao City for charges of rebellion and alleged involvement in the massacre.
Also detained in a police facility in Cotabato City for the same charges are his son Zaldy Ampatuan, the suspended governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) but whose term is to end on September 30, 2011.
Nevertheless, reliable sources close to the clan, who spoke on condition of anonymity, disclosed that members and their supporters have assured the patriarch they would do the campaigning for him in his absence.
Moreover, the sources pointed that clan members are still in control of the majority of the 36 towns in Maguindanao as mayors and who are running for reelection in the May 10 polls.
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