Fragile peace now felt in Marawi City
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By:
John Unson
MARAWI CITY -- Tranquility has lately been spreading around the city and neighboring towns in Lanao del Sur, hounded for years by high prevalence of crimes and clan wars involving big Maranaw families.
One recent development to have eased the tension in the 96 barangays here was a Supreme Court ruling declaring the overstaying superintendent of Marawi City schools officially retired from government service in 2013 yet.
The decision of the High Tribunal ended a three-year standoff between the recalcitrant Mona Macatanong and a set of officials installed by the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) to manage her office after her supposedly mandatory retirement three years ago.
The drawn-out showdown, worsened by legal battles among protagonists, caused fiscal and administrative woes that affected the operations of schools in Marawi City and stymied the hiring of new teachers and the promotion of hundreds to higher teaching positions.
City officials and their counterparts in the province, Lanao del Sur Gov. Soraya Alonto-Adiong and her son, Vice Gov. Mamintal Adiong, Jr., assured this week they are doing their best, with the help of influential members of the Islamic religious communities, to contain the threats to local security from criminals and terrorists.Marawi City Mayor Majul Gandamra on Thursday said there is security coordination now between his office and the provincial government, something never done in a decade owing to political differences between former city officials and the chief executive of the province.Gandamra, a practicing lawyer, was elected mayor of Marawi City only last May 9, 2016. He was a member of the ARMM’s 24-seat Regional Legislative Assembly before he got to the helm of the Marawi City government. I’m thankful and so grateful to the provincial government of Lanao del Sur for supporting my domestic peace and security and sanitation programs,” Gandamra said.He said provincial officials can now come to the Marawi City hall anytime for important meetings with local leaders.
He said the provincial governor of Lanao del Sur is helping him rebuild Marawi City into what it was in the past, a strong icon of Maranaw hospitality and resilience.The fragile peace spreading around Marawi City now, once touted as the shabu capital” of ARMM, became markedly visible when thousands paraded on its streets on September 14 in celebration ofthe city’s 76th founding anniversary.It was an event never witnessed in about a decade due to local security problems.
Marawi City, originally known as Dansalan municipality, was the flash point for the Moro aspiration for self-governance, inspired by the crafting here in 1935 by Maranaw sultans of the Dansalan Declaration” urging President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States of America to grant independence to the then American-controlled Mindanao Moro province.The city was shaken repeatedly by sensational incidents in recent years, among them kidnapping and murder incidents, rape of women involving drug addicts and violence among heavily-armed Maranaw families locked in deadly clan wars.