Officials put closure to deadly rido in seaside Lanao town

LANAO DEL SUR -- Two feuding Maranaw clans reconciled on Friday, ending a 20-year bloody rido that caused fatalities on both sides.Leaders of the Balindong and Montañer political clans in the seaside Malabang town in Lanao del Sur promised over the Qur’an to live in peace again.They also swore to cooperate in restoring normalcy in barangays where their followers had figured in bloody gunfights that displaced villagers.The rido, which means vendetta feud in the Maranaw dialect, between the two clans was sparked by bitter political differences, escalated by armed confrontations during election periods.It took negotiators more than five years to convince elders of both sides to reconcile amicably and sign a covenant enjoining them to restore family ties severed by misunderstandings that challenged their maratabat, or clan pride, and together locked them in deep-seated animosity.Major Gen. Arnel Dela Vega, commander of the Army’s 6thInfantry Division, said he is thankful to officials of the 6thInfantry Battalion based in Malabang, to Lanao del Sur Vice Gov. Mamintal Adiong, Jr. and local Maranaw elders for initiating the reconciliation of the two clans.Dela Vega said credit also has to go the regional peace and order council of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao for helping address the problem through ARMM’s incumbent regional vice governor, Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, also an ethnic Maranaw.Previous attempts to settle the Balindong-Montañer rido were futile and intermittent clashes marred the fragile peace in different barangays in Malabang, touted as oldest Islamic settlement in Lanao del Sur.Negotiations again started early this year, with Col. Jesus Sarsagat of the 603rdBrigade and his subordinate, Lt. Col. Ruben Aquino, commanding officer of the 6thIB, and representatives of Chief Superintendent Reuben Theodore Sindac of the ARMM regional police, acting as emissaries of intervening provincial and regional officials. We are thankful to the leaders of the two clans for putting closure to a vendetta feud that dragged on for many years, Dela Vega said.Dela Vega said top leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has an on-going peace overture with Malacañang, also helped in urging the Balindong and Montañer clans to agree to a diplomatic resolution of their rido.The government and the MILF are bound to mutually cooperate in addressing domestic peace and security concerns by the 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities, crafted by both sides to prevent undue hostilities while the Mindanao peace process is underway. In context members of both clans broke bread, smoked the proverbial peace pipe and swore over the sacred Qur’an to bury their hatchets and start life anew as siblings in tribe and religion, Dela Vega said.