Constituents mourn death of mayor killed in N. Cotabato police ops

MAGUINDANAO --- Personnel of the Datu Saudi Ampatuan local government unit are mourning the death of their mayor in an alleged shootout with anti-narcotics agents in Makilala, North Cotabato on Friday.
Town officials even raised the Philippine flag at half-mast inside their LGU compound in Barangay Salbu in Datu Saudi Ampatuan to honor the late Mayor Samsudin Dimaukom.Mastura Tapa, municipal administrator, on Saturday said LGU officials and rank-and-file employees were saddened by what is for them untimely demise of Dimaukom.Tapa insisted they knew their mayor well and could not believe he was engaged in narcotics trade as alleged by authorities and his political adversaries.Dimaukom and nine companions were killed in a gunfight with policemen in Makilala, North Cotabato which reportedly erupted when they fired at a team that flagged down their convoy from Davao City to inspect their vehicles for methamphetamine hydrochloride, most known as shabu. Dimaukom, an ethnic Maguindanaon, was in his second term as mayor of a fifth-class town still reeling from armed conflicts and where the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, which boasts of allegiance to the Independent State of Iraq and Syria, is operating with impunity.His wife, incumbent Datu Saudi Ampatuan Vice Mayor Anida Abas-Dimaukom, will take over the town’s mayoral post based on a succession rule stated in the Local Government Code.

Dimaukom and his now mayor-apparent spouse ran in tandem as official candidates of the Liberal Party during the May 9, 2016 local elections.

Lawmen, backed by soldiers, stormed their house in Datu Saudi Ampatuan last month to search for drugs but found nothing.Dimaukom was buried on Friday afternoon in an open field, behind a landmark multi-million pink mosque he built near their town hall two years ago, in keeping with Islamic tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours from the time of death.Dimaukom was among more than a hundred private individuals, elected officials, policemen, judges and other ranking government employees President Rodrigo Duterte had tagged as drug traffickers and whose names he announced publicly through the media early on.He was known as pink boy of central Mindanao for his having painted pink their town hall and other buildings inside their municipal government compound and vending stalls in their public market.The costly pink Islamic worship site the 54-year-old Dimaukom constructed about 50 meters away from their town hall is now a tourist attraction, frequented by domestic tourists and motorists passing by.Skeptics have questioned the source of money he spent in constructing the mosque, aware that Datu Saudi Ampatuan, a poor town in the second district of Maguindanao, has only more or less P3 million worth of monthly Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) from the national coffer.A large fraction of the monthly IRA of impoverished Maguindanao towns goes to the operation budget of recipient local government units.Dimaukom also owned a customized and heavily tinted US-made pink Hummer II, perhaps the only pink four-by-four sports utility vehicle in Mindanao if not in the whole country.Supt. Romeo Galgo, Jr. of the Police Regional Office-12 said the operation that resulted in a shootout between policemen and the group of Dimaukom in Barangay Old Bulatukan in Makilala, North Cotabato was carried out based on a tip purporting they were carrying shabu in their vehicles.The mayor and his companions were en route to Maguindanao from Davao City when agents of PRO-12’s anti-illegal drugs unit stopped them for inspection at a stretch of the Cotabato-Davao Highway in Barangay Old Bulatukan, a hinterland area in Makilala.Galgo said the firefight erupted when the group of Dimaukom opened fire on policemen approaching their vehicles to search for shabu. It was a legitimate operation, done according to standard procedures. The operating teams have no way but return fire when they were fired upon, said Galgo, spokesman of PRO-12.