There’s more to life in Buldon than rido

BULDON, Maguindanao - A clear feeling of relief and joy showed in their faces as Ali Calucop and Khalil Bantuas sat down and sip coffee together with Mayor Abolais Manalao before their basketball game as part of the Saduratan Festival 2017. The Calucop clan of barangay Romidas, Buldon and the Bantuas clan of barangay Mataya also in Buldon has been on each other’s throat for years until Mayor Manalao settled both families four months ago. Their rido (clan war)has already claimed a few lives from both sides including their women. This is my first time since we had a rido to set foot again here in the town’s center, said Calucop, a village councilor from nearby barangay Romidas. He recalled that the more than 100-member Calucop clan cannot even go out of their residences for long and even work on their farms for fear that their enemies might be lurking somewhere and snipe at them with long-range rifles. He cannot even attend official meetings in the municipal hall being a public official from his village for fear that the Bantuas clan might ambush him. What’s worse is that we have to make all our children quit schools to keep them safe because in rido, no one is exempted even children or women, he said. When we go to nearby Parang town or to Cotabato City we have to go around Barira town to avoid passing by Barangay Mataya where the Bantuas families are staying, Calucop added. Khalil Bantuas jokingly recalled to his former enemy that they were also suffering the same. We can’t even stay long in our toilets outside our house for fear our enemies are watching and waiting for us to get outside, Bantuas said. And both laughed their heart out. When we go out to buy something we are like fugitives and we cannot stay long, and just like Ali, this is my first time also to set foot at the town center, Khalil said adding that they too even the children have to stop going to school due to rido. For years we cannot even sleep well even inside our homes for fear that they will attack us on or sleep. The Calucop and Bantuas clans will be vying against each other not anymore with arms but through a friendly basketball game as part of the celebration of Saduratan Festival 2017. This is life, there is so much of life that we and our children missed because of rido, Khalil said. Calucop also explained that in Buldon, he is confident that no more families will go back to rido because everybody now has seen the difference in their lives, not just the relief from daily fear for life and safety but also in the opportunities outside like better education for their children which they can afford now as they can work comfortably in their farms all day and conduct trade in the market freely. Association of Barangay Captain (ABC) President Rufo Capada, a Christian settler and barangay chairperson of Dinganen, said that you cannot see such people and merchants during those days when ridos were still rampant in Buldon. Councilor Capada said that even Christians cannot venture out safely to Moro barangays and vice versa. He added that in the past, the Christians and Muslims has virtually set a boundary, a river that if anyone of both sides cross that river they will be ambushed. All you can see here are those persons passing through the streets with guns and rifles on their shoulders, you can say then that there was no law here except through the barrels of the gun, Capada said adding that even in their farms the farmers have to carry firearms to protect themselves. Now, you can’t even hear gunshots as the municipal government with the military and police has prohibited that too, he added. Vice Mayor Atty. Cairoden P. Pangunotan, said that under Manalao’s leadership since 2013, rido settlement has been a priority program and has been gaining headway since, with only two cases of rido still unresolved. Pangunotan said the remain clan war is on the process of settlement which is safe to say that Buldon is now rido-free. The municipal government has established an Alternative Dispute Resolution Team (ADR) tasked to address and facilitate the settlement of ridos in Buldon with the help of the Army's 37thInfantry Batallion, the local police, religious leaders and elders. From a gun-toting populace to a gun-free society might be a far-fetch vision and an impossible dream in Buldon but Manalao is proud that he lived to see that day. In fact, Buldon is the very first municipality to pioneer its local Balik-Baril Program, where clans who accumulate guns for ridos feel it is no longernecessary.So they decided to surrender guns in exchange for livelihood projects from the government, It is actually the confidence now of the people on the government that they can be protected that makes them lay down their arms, Manalao said. Manalao added that a local legislation is set to be filed before the town's legislative body banning carrying of guns in public places.With the local government winning the support of the people in the campaign against loose firearms and prevention of rido, Manalao sees no reason Buldon will not be a peaceful place to live in.With stable peace and order situation in Buldon making headway, Manalao more business and employment opportunities are coming in to add up with the Uni-Frutti Banana Plantation. The banana firm has been lauded as having the sweetest table banana in the country according to Uni-Frutti executives. Coffee and Cacao investors are now also conducting training for Cacao doctors in partnership with IC Net Limited. Boundaries no more, Ee are One Buldon In the past, there were no days when the Muslims and Christians do not shoot at each other. No one dares to cross the Simuay River which serves as the boundary for the Moro and Christians in barangays Dinganen and Edcor in Buldon or else they will surely be ambushed, Capada, the ABC president and ex-officio member of Sangguniang Bayan,recalled. He said that even their farms, especially along boundaries, the Moro and Christian settlers fight each other making life hard for both parties as they cannot freely till their lands. There are vigilantes, the Christian Ilagas and the Moro Blackshirts hunting down each other and the cycle of violence and killings seems never-ending then as both parties and their siblings all want to exact revenge towards the other. Both sides accumulated firearms and ammunition enough for them sustain the war for a lifetime. Incomes from harvest are invested more on firepower than education and well being of family members. It was only in the 1980’s during the term of Mayor Abolais Manalao’s father, the former Mayor Macarampat Manalao, that the Chirstian-Moro conflict was slowly addressed and settled so that the Christians can now go to the town’s center and market but still there were some animosity between some families especially those who lost their kins and shed blood. Now, under MayorManalao's leadership,there is zero rido between the Christians and Moro residents of Buldon. Councilor Capada said that both Christians and Muslims can now freely visit in each other’s communities. There are no boundaries now. We are one buldon now, Capada said. We can even go now to Buldon’s town center even at midnight without fear, and also our Muslim brothers pass by our Christian barangays anytime towards nearby towns of Pigacawayan and Alamada in North Cotabato, he added. Mayor Manalao comes and visits the Christian communities all by himself and even sleeps there at sometimes. Believe it or not, we have 15 Christian churches in Buldon. Six of them are Catholic churches so we also have patronal fiestas in Buldon, Capada said. In Buldon, everyone is treated well and fair. We are one, may you be a Christian or a Muslim, Capada is the only Christian member of Buldon’s legislative body. Now rido-free, Buldon residents freely harvest sweetest bananas and tellsweet tales of better lives for its people. Zainab Maluag couldn’t have afforded sending her children to college if it wasn’t for her employment in Al Sahar Agri-Ventures, Inc. Banana Plantation in the village of Oring, Buldon, Maguindanao. Zainab, mother of four, is now supporting two of her children who are taking up degree courses in Midsayap, North Cotabato. We couldn’t have afforded sending our kids to college if we relied on farming alone, said Zainab. She has been working at the plantation for six months only, yet she and her husband are already relieved of daily struggle to put food on their table. Matabay Dirangaren-Alimpang, Packing House Lead Woman, reported that before Buldon became rido-free, the village of Oring was a center of gunfights of clans feuding. This caused villagers extreme poverty due to inaccessibility of the farmlands and families’ inability to till their own lands for fear of attacks from their clan enemies. After returning to position in 2013, Mayor Manalao, lovingly called by his people as Ang Panday, moved to settle the feuds and invite investors into the municipality. Unifrutti came in through the Al Sahar Agri-Ventures, Inc. with the help of the Iranun Premiere Development Cooperative, establishing a banana plantation of over a hundred hectares in the same village that used to witness bloodshed of its people. Today, the plantation employs 334 Iranuns and exports at least 1,000 boxes of bananas a day to countries such as South Korea, Japan, and some countries in the Middle East. sand//apis.mail.yahoo.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjJ-28Og0-Yfm5P4PKX6UQMqo0-KfqPQxvf1TzBm3cM-NnO0MnWR2TDkv0tLXy6VJ06A/messages/@.id==ACmH8QoAADqNWfE8ugod2HAZjPg/content/parts/@.id==3/thumbnail?appId=YMailNorrin Unifrutti also revealed to the management of the plantation that their produced bananas are the sweetest among all Unifruitti plantations across the Philippines. The employees were more than delighted to report that they received increases in their salaries after the announcement. The management is now processing the expansion of the plantation to 200 hectares more as more Iranun families walk in to offer their lands for rent.Matabay said that the Iranun community in Buldon have been enlightened of the importance of employment as a foundation of their town’s development as well as their individual lives. She also stated that almost all the employees of the plantation have now purchased properties including motorcycles for daily transportation and jewelries for investment. Now our daily schedule is work-and-home only. No more time for unnecessary chitchatting and rumor-spreading which can possibly cause conflicts between families, Matabay said. The employees proudly conveyed with smiles on their faces that the families that used to fight and kill each other in the previous years are now sharing food at the plantation’s dining room. Zainab then said that they realized now how important education is. Employment pulled us out of our usual lifestyle that would take us nowhere in life, she said. This is why we want our children to be professionals, we don’t want them to experience the same struggle again during the ridos, she added. The constituents of Buldon share the same ideology of Mayor Manalao, that education is the sustainable solution to their long struggle for peace and progress in the town of Buldon. Totally getting rid of rido through education For Mayor Manalao, setting himself as an example to rid his town of ridowas one significant step to attain peace and order in Buldon. Roaming around the municipality unguarded and unarmed is his way of highlighting his campaign to get rid of guns and violence in the area. After gaining back his townspeople’s trust in the government, convincing them to surrender guns for a peaceful community, and settling decades of clan feuds in the land, he had one problem to resolve, that is —sustainable peace and order. Mayor Manalao sees education as a vital element in solving societal issues. To him, education takes out the bad and brings in the good at any political and civic issue in any country. sand//apis.mail.yahoo.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjJ-28Og0-Yfm5P4PKX6UQMqo0-KfqPQxvf1TzBm3cM-NnO0MnWR2TDkv0tLXy6VJ06A/messages/@.id==ACmH8QoAADqNWfE8ugod2HAZjPg/content/parts/@.id==2/thumbnail?appId=YMailNorrin He believed that putting the children of Buldon to classrooms will only result to the best interests of the community. If the youth are educated, none of them would hold a gun, there won’t be violence. This is Mayor Manalao’s vision and his sustainable solution to a long-term problem in his town. If the youth of Buldon are educated and supported in their endeavor to be professionals, the peace that they are now experiencing continues, he believes. However, Manalao needs time as an investment in the context of education as a solution. In 2014, the local government of Buldon launched the Support to Education Program (SEP) which provides up to 100,000 pesos worth of cash assistance to all public schools in the municipality as support to their self-initiated projects. To put this program into permanency, the LGU arranged SEP to be included in the annual Municipal Budget Ordinance. Later in 2016, the program was expanded to include all Madrasah (Islamic schools) in the budget. To top it all, the LGU gives award to best-performing schools in the annual Saduratan Festival as an encouragement to the school principals to perform better each year. I envision Buldon to be a first-class municipality in the future, Mayor Manalao said. His faith in the children of Buldon inspires him to innovate more programs and invite more investors in the town. The investors would bring employment to the community and income to the local government, thus, increasing the assistance to education programs. As Manalao grows old as town leader, he has learned that his time is his best investment for the development of his beloved homeland. I would know that my time investment bear fruit if in the future when I’m older, I see my constituents leading ourtown as I did, M analao said.