Maguindanaon chairman of largest MNLF group yield post to Tausug comrade

PAGADIAN CITY -- The ethnic Maguindanaon chairman of the largest group in the Moro National Liberation Front yielded his post on Sunday to a Tausug comrade after a nine-year markedly rigorous stint.The position of former Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, who assumed chairmanship of their group in 2008 based on a collegial central committee imprimatur, was taken over by former Sulu Congressman Yusoph Jikiri.The MNLF leadership transition rite was witnessed by Major Gen. Carlito Galvez, commander of the Zamboanga City-based Western Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. We have a policy of rotating leadership in the front because the Bangsamoro community is not just one tribe, but a confluence of ethno-linguistic groups that must have equal voices in our central committee. We don’t allow leadership monopoly here, Sema said.The MNLF signed a final peace accord with Malacanang on September 2, 1996, brokered by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, comprised of more than 50 Muslim states, including petroleum exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa.The change in the MNLF leadership was agreed during a prior meeting here Sunday among its officials from central Mindanao, the Zamboanga peninsula and the provinces of Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Palawan.Sema and Jikiri were among dozens of MNLF leaders who organized in April 2000 the infamous Council of 15 that declared their leader then, Nur Misuari, chairman emeritus due to loss of confidence in his leadership.Instead of yielding, Misuari, who hails from Sulu, consolidated his remaining followers and declared the 15-member council an ambitious faction bereft of authority to take over the MNLF leadership from him.Misuari’s stance resulted in the fragmentation of the MNLF into three groups, the smaller one under him, the larger Sema faction, and the smallest bloc, the Islamic Command Council.The MNLF-Sema group presently has more than 20 revolutionary states scattered in Mindanao and, unlike Misuari and his men, is not hostile to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).Misuari’s animosity to the MNLF-Sema group worsened when its leaders started reaching out to the MILF three years ago to ensure cooperation in putting a negotiated closure to the Moro issue hounding the nation for four decades now.The MILF, founded by Imam Salamat Hashim, who had studied Islamic theology at the Al-Azzhar University in the Egypt, splintered from the MNLF in 1980.Hashim, born in Barangay Cudal in Pagalungan town in Maguindanao, helped Misuari organize the MNLF in 1970.Hashim and hundreds of his followers bolted from the MNLF and launched the MILF in 1980 due to irreconcilable ideological differences with Misuari.The current peace overture between the MILF and the government started in January 7, 1997.Both sides are now trying to implement two compacts reached in about 17 years of negotiations, the October 15, 2013 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro and the March 27, 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro.Misuari also became subject of drawn-out criticisms for his poor management of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao while ARMM governor from 1996 to 2001.While at the helm of the ARMM government, mayors in the region’s component provinces ranted on Misuari’s being an absentee regional chief executive.As a consequence, they even asked Malacañang then to revert their local government units to Regions 9 and 12 where their towns originally belonged prior to the plebiscite that resulted in the creation of the autonomous region in 1990.Sema said there was democracy in the selection of Jikiri as his successor, a process that involved leaders of the MNLF from across Mindanao.He said Jikiri, their new duly acknowledged chairman, will function as a figurehead, whose authority shall come from members of their central committee. He will not be a dictator. It is the people from the central committee down to the smallest unit of the MNLF who shall coach him collectively on how to run the show, Sema said.