Tacurong Mayor orders stores, banks closed or fined during rally

August 16, 2008

About 5,ooo people joined the protest rally against the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) in Tacurong City yesterday, August 15, even as owners of stores, banks and other establishments were told to close shops or faced fines clamped by city local government executives.

Tacurong City Mayor Lino Montilla and his brother defeated gubernatorial candidate Angelo Montilla organized the rally. But report said no other local executives joined the rally.

 Wearing red shirts, students, teachers, government employees, religious, professionals, and other individuals from different business and transport groups attended the peace rally which started around 8 a.m. held at the Tacurong City plaza.

 

However, most of those who attended the rally were students of public  and private schools, except Notre Dame schools, whose principals refused to respond to the call of the Montillas to actively oppose the BJE.

 

No Moro attended the rally, the report added.

 

The Montillas owned the African oil plantation in Tacurong City and Isulan, which is being claimed by Moros as their lands.

 

In the meantime, Khaled Musa, deputy chairman of the MILF committee on information, blasted the group of North Cotabato Vice Governor Emmanuel Piňol as the emerging extremist group of settlers’ politicians, whose agenda is to oppose everything good to the Bangsamoro people.

 

Pińol, a one-time Catholic seminarian but quitted after one year, because he cannot defy the lure of earthly things, led petitioners to the Philippine Supreme Court to stop and declare the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) from being formally signed by government peace negotiators.

 

Musa desrcribed Pinol as like Adolf Hitler, whose hatred for the Jews led him to massacre them in millions both by firing squads or in gas chambers.

 

He recalled that when the Moros were incorporated into the Philippine government in the grant of independence in 1946, there was no plebiscitary consent by the Moros.

 

He said this was repeated when the Empire Province of Cotabato was gerrymandeered into several provinces in the 80s.

 

“Why does Pinol protest the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) when only Moro-dominated areas are the subject of plebiscite?” he inquired.