Defining the News
With Abra’s mountains where they cannot grow any means of livelihood, the people of Abra will always be ruled by political clans and they will have to depend on politicians for their means of livelihood The Commission on Elections had made the province of Abra a test case for the recent Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections.
If the Comelec can succeed in making Abra a peaceful province, Comelec would be able to do the same in provinces where elections had made them traditionally “hot spots” and “flash points.” We recall that Abra is traditionally, Santa Banana, always tagged as a “hot spot” in recent elections, whether local and national!But the Comelec must remember the reason why people of Abra take elections so seriously and that candidates for local elections are often killed.I know this, having been born there in a small town then called Dolores, ruled by the Barberos, and I spent my youth there until I had the chance to come to Manila for high school until World War II erupted. The province is basically a mountainous area, that traders from Ilocos controlled the rice trade from Cagayan Valley. I’d say the rice Ilocanos take as staple in Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur and la Union comes from Cagayan.Thus, I would say the reason why the people of Abra take their politics so intensely and fiercely – a matter of life and death – is because politics is their main income. This is why people there have to belong one way or another to politicians who have the money to spread around during election. We must not forget that Abra used to be a sub-province of Ilocos Sur, until the political strongman Don Quintin Paredes, made it a province.After him the ruling political clans were the Valeras and Bersamins. Their rivalry was so intense that a Bersamin, if I’m not mistaken, a brother of now Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin who was Chief Justice, was killed in the parking lot of the Mount Carmel Church in New Manila.As an Abreno, I can rightly say elections in Abra will always be a flash point and no amount of police or military surveillance can stop the killings and stop it from becoming a flash point, not with the people of Abra making themselves subservient to political clans. With Abra’s mountains where they cannot grow any means of livelihood, the people of Abra will always be ruled by political clans and they will have to depend on politicians for their means of livelihood.It was not only in Abra where political clans had to kill their rivals. I also recall the fight between the Crisologos and the Singsons – both blood relatives – over control of Ilocos Sur politics. The Crisologo clan was then controlled by the late Floro “Floring” Crisologo, while the Singson clan had Luis “Chavit” Singson, making Ilocos Sur notorious for political feud.In Ilocos Sur, it was a fight for control over virginia tobacco, the lifeblood of Ilocanos in Ilocos Sur.During the well-known feud between Floring and Chavit, there was even the burning of one village in Bantay town.With the passing of Crisologo, Chavit now controls the province. Chavit is the patriarch of the ruling clan with his son as governor and with Chavit now as mayor of Narvacan. Chavit is now the chairman of the League of Mayors nationwide.For those unaware of the history of the area, the Muslims were always under the control of political clans. Having stayed in Cotabato City when, with my late buddy Rudy Tupas, we were editors of the Oblate newspaper The Mindanao Cross, a weekly newspaper , the City of Cotabato was then controlled by the Sinsuats, with Blah Sinsuat as congressman, Duma Sinsuat as governor, Mando Sinsuat as mayor of the city and Mama Sinsuat, the Cabinet secretary of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos Sr, the whole Cotabato province then was under the control of the Sinsuats, with Odin Sinsuat as their patriarch.Thus, the political violence at the Bangsamoro of Muslim Mindanao is nothing new.Recall the Ampatuan massacre of 58 journalists some years ago was a continuing feud between two Muslim clans. Santa Banana, Cotabato City now is a far cry from the peaceful Cotabato City I knew in the early 50s.In fact, that’s where I met the woman who would become my wife. The city was 90 percent controlled by old-timers, mostly immigrants from Luzon and the Visayas who made their fortunes in Cotabato. Now, the city is 90 percent controlled by Muslims, most of them awash with money, buying the residences of old-timers who had returned to Luzon and the Visayas.These are the products of BARMM which made Cotabato City the headquarters of the BARMM.It may be a joke when they say that Muslims would rather sleep with their guns than with their wives, but truth is there are loose firearms in the the hands of private armies in the BARMM.Well, that’s how it is with the BARMM, especially during elections where the Comelec had to send police to control the killings and acts of violence.
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