MNLF Chairman Jikiri passes away after bout with cancer
Local News • 19:00 PM Sun Oct 18, 2020
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By:
John M. Unson
Yusop Jikiri, 66, died in Indanan, Sulu late Saturday. (MNLF photo)
COTABATO CITY --- Southerners are mourning the demise of Moro National Liberation Front leader Yusop Jikiri who supported the peace process between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that resulted in the creation of the Bangsamoro region.
Jikiri, 66, was chairman of an MNLF group larger and more politically-active than that of front founder Nur Misuari
Relatives said Jikiri succumbed to cancer at about 11:00 p.m. Saturday in his residence in Barangay Pasil in Indanan town in Sulu, a component-province of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
He was one in a bloc of senior MNLF officials, among them former Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, that took over in 2001 the front’s command from Misuari for loss of confidence in his leadership .
In a statement Sunday, the MNLF’s central committee that Jikiri led said his death was a big loss to the country’s Moro communities.
A battle-hardened Tausug, Jikiri started as a rebel commander and became MNLF’s chief-of-staff until the crafting of the group’s Sept. 2, 1996 peace pact with the national government.
He had served as governor of Sulu and as congressional representative of the island province.
Jikiri and his colleagues in the MNLF supported the MILF’s peace talks with Malacañang that paved the way for last year’s creation of BARMM.
The chairman of the MILF’s central committee, Hadji Ahod Ebrahim, is now chief minister of the newly-established BARMM.
A senior MNLF official, Romeo Sema, who is BARMM’s labor minister, said Sunday Jikiri shall be remembered for his good leadership of the front.
Sema also appealed to MNLF members to continue patronizing the national government’s peace overtures with Moro communities.
He said the MNLF also assures the Organization of Islamic Cooperation based in Saudi Arabia of its continuing implementation of its September 2, 1996 peace agreement with Malacañang.
The OIC, comprised of more than 50 Muslim states, including wealthy petroleum-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa, brokered the government-MNLF peace pact.