Hataman-Lucman tandem secure endorsement of Al-Mustaqbal group

LANAO DEL NORTE --- The country’s largest block of missionary Muslim women on Friday pledged support to the candidacy of two senior reelectionist executives of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.The Al-Mustaqbal Women, established more than a decade ago by former Lanao del Sur Gov. Aleem Basheer Manalao, endorsed during a gathering in Marawi City ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman and his running mate, Vice Gov. Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, as their favored candidates for the highest and second highest elective posts in the regional government, respectively.Hataman and Lucman, both Liberal Party stalwarts, are each aspiring for a second term in tandem.Manalao, a cleric who studied Islamic theology abroad, said it was only during the time of the Hataman administration that the ARMM government started empowering the local women sector through massive education, health and social welfare interventions.He said Moro women also now have convenient access to service outfits of the ARMM’s health department and to higher academic institutions owing to the Hataman administration’s having built concrete roads connecting far-flung villages to the location of such facets.Lucman, who had also studied Islamic religion and Arabic language in two universities in Saudi Arabia while his family was in exile there due to persecution by President Ferdinand Marcos, was guest of honor and keynote speaker in the mammoth Marawi City gathering of Al-Mustaqbal members from across Southern Philippines.The term mustaqbal means future” in Arabic.While Lanao del Sur governor, Manalao, the group’s founder, spent most of his time organizing Muslim women into community-based preachers focused on propagating Islamic family values and peace education based on the faith’s fraternalism and interfaith tolerance doctrines.Manalao even raised the hand of Lucman, as part of their gathering program, to manifest their support to the Lucman-Hataman tandem. They also announced during the gathering that they also give to Gov. Hataman the same support. We are thankful. The lists of voters in all of ARMM’s five provinces indicate that more than half of the registered voters in the autonomous region are women,” Lucman said.The ARMM covers Maguindanao and Lanal del Sur, both in mainland Mindanao, and the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.Manalao said it took him and all Al-Mustaqbal members a long time to decide on supporting Hataman and Lucman owing to their collegial consensus-building practice in formulating organizational policies.He said it was the accomplishments in the past three years of Lucman and Hataman in regional governance, peace and infrastructure initiatives that enticed them to support duo's aspiration to serve again for three more years under a new electoral mandate.Manalao said in Lanao del Sur alone they have more than 5,000 members scattered in municipal centers and far-flung barangays in all of the 39 towns in the province.Local officials present in the Al-Mustaqbal assembly confirmed to reporters that the group is more influential than all local political blocs in Lanao del Sur, among them the Ompia Party, which was established by another former provincial governor, the late Imam Mahid Mutilan.