ISTAMBAY SA MINDANAO

The Bukidnon tribe is seeking endorsement from the city government of Malaybalay for its Daraghuyan ancestral domain claim over at least 4,700 hectares inside the Mt. Kitanglad Range and Natural Park. Bae Inatlawan Adelina Tarino, head claimant, said the city government’s endorsement is the last requirement for the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) to process their application.

“We hope you will help us in this requirement, which is the last document we need for the application,” Tarino’s September 23 letter to Mayor Florencio Flores, said. Tarino’s letter was written in Cebuano.

Flores endorsed the request to the city council on the same day. The legislators have calendared it for October 7, Tarino said, adding Councilor Manuel Dinlayan, the council’s committee on indigenous people’s chair, assured here it will be tackled this week.

She noted the tribe’s great difficulty in acquiring an endorsement from the barangay government in Dalwangan village, where the tribe is based.  Read full story here.

A plan in the 1990s to create another municipality for the Matigsalug tribe to be carved out of Kitaotao town is being revived, an official said.

Board member Roelito Gawilan, president of the Bukidnon Federation of the Association of Barangay Captains, confirmed they have started “at the grassroots level” in initiating the process to create a new town for the Matigasalugs.

Gawilan is President of the Federation of Matigsalug-Manobo Tribal Councils (FEMMATRICS) and also the elected barangay captain of Sinuda.

Gawilan said they are now conducting a study on the land area, population, and income of at least 15 of Kitaotao’s 35 barangays. Read full story here.

Participants take time to smile and relax for a date with posterity (Photo by Skippy Lumawag courtesy of Mindanews)

The formal sessions of the 4th Mindanao Media Summit just concluded early afternoon today, 09 August 2008.

The theme: “Mindanao 2020: The vision begins with us”, is placed in an imposing tarp at the back draft. It was a reminder to me as a member of the group who took on “drafting” the vision from the participants. “Where are the other members of the styling committee?” I asked myself.

I ate a late breakfast today as I stayed late for my recent attempt to write a narrative report. So when I entered the summit hall, I have to do some catching up on who did what the night before.

I caught up on the secretariat who were busy calling the rest of the group for the picture taking.

Meanwhile, I picked the shiniest plate on the buffet table and proceeded to feast on hotel breakfast. In my peripheral vision and hearing I could hear Jocan talking me to drop the breakfast for a moment and smile it out in the photographic firing squad.

I managed some sips of brewed coffee and few scoops of the one-serving steamed rice and the hard-boiled egg and beef curry sud-an. I have to or I couldn’t move a muscle to say “cheese”. Oh, I went there seconds later as I have to squeeze in my summit shirt. I went there to see if the pool was really tempting enough for some laps of swimming, to regret I didn’t plunge when I could last night.

The last day of the three-day gathering of Mindanao media’s “decision-makers” started with quaint picture taking by the poolside of the Waterfront Insular Hotel in Lanang, Davao City.

It was supposed to capture for the future the faces of the news professionals who participated in the summit in a step to improve capacity as stakeholder to peace and development in Mindanao. Read the rest of this entry »

Justice delayed is justice denied and in Bukidnon, whose courts are swamped with cases, resetting a trial today would likely mean waiting for 2010, an official of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines has warned.
Anastacio Rosos, IBP Bukidnon chapter president, said the problem has hampered the speedy dispensation of justice in the province’s four regional trial courts.

He said the lack of judges caused each of the four courts to have a load of at least 1,000 cases, affecting specially the hearing of criminal cases. Read full report here.

He said one indicator is that the courts’ schedules had been filled up, that cases

to be reset for hearing could be scheduled in 2010.

Rosos said IBP found the whole year of 2009 is filled with court hearings. He said they have started plotting out schedules for 2010.

It was a bit awkward for me and Omar, a reserved Maguindanaoan who tried to be informative, as we took a peek at the wedding of a couple from two big Maguindanaoan families in Cotabato City.

We were looking through the window from our side of the conference hall— we looked like kids wanting to gate crash or something. Everybody in the training was doing just that as we waited for our morning session to start.

We were holding grassroots documentation and reporting training next door and the arrival of wedding guests drew our attention —especially when traditional wedding songs and hymns began to play. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to all who sent messages to my Kamuyot bag.

Ma’am Prix (and to all who are unfamiliar with it), Kamuyot is Bukidnon’s version of the tinalak. It’s made of sinamay from abaca fiber, from plantations scattered in Bukidnon’s rugged terrain. Of course, its woven mostly by indigenous women who sell it to buyers from the lowlands.

It’s a business beginning to die –unless the government and the lumad communities could save it together against fiber plant diseases haunting even planters in our beloved Davao City.

I’m in for some updates from the Bukidnon plateau. Read the rest of this entry »

The courageous former Bombo Radyo Cauayan anchor, polio survivor and now turned Isabela governor swept an international conference of women leaders on conflict transformation and good governance in Davao City with a typhoon-level inspirational message.Wanted: More women in governance is a story about the conference.

Here’s here piece: Reclaiming and asserting the transformative female leadership.
Read the rest of this entry »

Leaders and educators in Mindanao of the world’s two leading faiths should not stop educating their followers on interfaith understanding “to remove the clutters of misconception” from even among their followers.

“The effort should be vice versa, on both sides,” Aleem Jamal Munib, an official of the Davao City Madrasah Development Program, told MindaNews.

“This is very important. If we don’t talk, misconceptions would prevail, causing distrust on each other,” he said.

Among the key issues splitting mixed communities, Munib said discrimination remained on top. Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.

Compostela Valley board member Neri Barte is now facing charges of serious physical injuries, grave coercion, grave threats, serious misconduct and grave abuse of authority for allegedly attacking a Radyo Natin broadcaster right inside the announcer’s booth as the latter was on air.

Natin broadcaster Roel Sembrano filed the complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman in Mindanao in the presence of his colleagues from the tri-media.

Sembrano recounted to reporters his encounter with Barte on Oct. 24 at the announcer’s booth.

He said he was on his daily morning program, Haring Lungsod Ikaw and Nasayod, when Barte, with his wife and daughter, barged into the announcer’s booth and mauled him, even drawing out a gun and pointed it towards him. Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Armed Forces Chief of  Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon and Philippine National Police chief Avelino Razon and three other military officials are respondents in the first petition for writ of amparo in Mindanao.

The petition was filed by Bebelita Bustamante of Paquibato district, whose only son, 21-year old Luicito, disappeared on October 27.

The other respondents are Major General Ernesto Boa of the Army’s 10th Infantry Division based in Davao City; Lt. Col. Alexander Ambal, chief of the division’s 73rd infantry batallion in Sto. Thomas, Davao del Norte, Col. Allan Luga, commander of Task Force Davao, a certain Noli Obat and seven  John Does, or unidentified respondents.

The Karapatan human rights group, who accompanied Ms Bustamante at the Hall of Justice, said her son was reportedly taken by elements of Task Force Davao. Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.

Any time, any day.

Chief Justice Reynato Puno wants the public to know that any time or any day, relatives of missing persons can petition the judge for a writ of amparo, a measure intended to protect the missing person from becoming a victim of extrajudicial killings or a desaparecido (disappeared or victim of enforced disappearance).

The writ is enforceable anywhere in the country.

“We don’t compromise the life of the aggrieved party just because one feels sleepy,” Puno told members of the local judiciary, prosecutors, lawyers, the military and police officials, human rights groups and representatives from civil society at a forum at the University of Mindanao late Tuesday. Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.

Three months ago, the National Press Club commissioned a group of artists based in Luzon to do a mural depecting press freedom in the country.

Now, the mural, the group, and the NPC share the public limelight with accusations of bastardization and violation of press freedom via censorship. There are also serious questions on intellectual property rights or the rights of the artists to their art as they accused the NPC of altering their artwork.

I remain an observer on this recent issue to catch national attention. The reason, however, why I’m putting this in this platform is because I believe in the group’s rallying point. The group choose to depict the freedom of the press and the fight to keep it, is an issue of the man-on-the-street, not just an exclusive and sole struggle of the journalists in the country.

Read more on the issue at the group’s website here and here. A link also on today’s story at the Inquirer here.