New solon keen on congressional scholarship for students

MAGUINDANAO --- Congressman Esmael Mangudadatu assured Monday to continue helping Muslim, Christian and Lumad students get through college using whatever grant he can secure from Congress.

Mangudadatu was governor of Maguindanao for three consecutive terms that lasted from June 30, 2010 to June 30, 2019.

He told reporters Monday he is unsure, however, if the scope of his education program as congressman would be as extensive as the Maguindanao Program for Peace and Community Empowerment, most known as MagPEACE.

He pioneered the MagPEACE in 2010 that has since produced many professionals, among them a lawyer and a medical course graduate.

“I will do my best to have an education program for poor but deserving students in Maguindanao regardless of their ethnic identities and religions,” Mangudadatu said.

Mangudadatu revealed his plan to the media Monday while at Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat town to attend the transition of the leadership of the Army’s 6^th Infantry Division from the outgoing Major Gen. Cirilito Sobejana to his classmate in the Philippine Military Academy class 1987, Major Gen. Diosdado Carreon.

Sobejana assumed two days before as commander of the Western Mindanao Command in Zamboanga City which is in control of military units in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and parts of the Zamboanga peninsula.

Mangudadatu led on Sunday the turnover of the provincial government to an incoming administration under newly-elected governor Mariam Sangki-Mangudadatu.

The new governor was represented to the event by her father, former Maguindanao Sangguniang Panlalawigan member Ali Sangki, manager for special projects in Maguindanao of the Southern Philippines Development Authority during the 1970s.

Mangudadatu also relinquished to the incoming administration P205 million worth of funds in the provincial coffer.

Mangudadatu, in a message during Sunday’s turnover program at the provincial capitol in Buluan town, appealed to his political supporters to help push the new administration’s peace and development agenda forward.

While at Camp Siongco Monday, Mangudadatu appealed anew, through media, to residents of Maguindanao’s 36 towns to continue supporting the peace efforts of President Rodrigo Duterte and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, meant to put a diplomatic closure to the secessionist problem hounding the country’s south since the late 1960s.

The leader of MILF, Hadji Ahod Ebrahim, now chief minister of the Bangsamoro region, was among the guests to Monday’s ceremonial turnover of command at 6^th ID that the chief of the Philippine Army, Lt. Gen. Macairog Alberto, presided over.