Fugitive narco-mayor leaves behind governance problems

MAGUINDANAO --- Caretakers assumed leadership of the local government unit in Talitay town whose chief executive wanted for large-scale drug trafficking abandoned two months ago, causing serious governance woes.Mayor Muntassir Sabal, whom President Rodrigo Duterte earlier tagged narco-politician, has been hiding since after he performed the hajj in Saudi Arabia last September without permission from Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu and the Department of the Interior and Local Government.Lawyer Kirby Abdullah, regional secretary of the DILG in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Thursday elected officials cannot travel abroad without authority from the government.Anti-narcotics agents and hundreds of soldiers recovered methamphetamine hydrochloride and military-type armaments in Sabal’s house in Talitay in raids meant to neutralize him and his local accomplices.Mangudadatu on Thursday said incumbent municipal councilors Kamid Buisan and Noraisa Mato took over as mayor and vice mayor of Talitay, respectively, based on a regulation stated in the Local Government Code.Abdullah said the DILG-ARMM recognizes the duo’s stewardship of the Talitay LGU. My office and the Maguindanao provincial board will iron out everything in the LGU there with the help of the DILG-ARMM, the police and the military, Mangudadatu said.Mangudadatu said Sabal violated administrative rules on political governance when he left the country last September to perform the hajj without approval from higher authorities. We will enforce the provisions of the Local Government Code on that regard with zeal and patriotism. That we can assure the residents of Talitay, the governor said.Buisan and Mato’s immediate concern for now is how to keep the residents of Talitay abreast on how much government money is left in the municipal coffer, handled in utmost secrecy by Sabal.Reporters on Tuesday tried but failed to locate the municipal treasurer, an appointee of Sabal, for an update on fiscal concerns besetting the Talitay LGU.Barangay folks confirmed on Wednesday that Sabal has been absent from office even prior to the recovery by policemen and soldiers of shabu and unlicensed firearms in his house in Talitay.He was nowhere in Talitay when authorities raided his house, an operation met with pocket resistance from his armed followers, who eventually escaped when MG520 attack helicopters were called in to drive them away.Sabal’s brother, Abdulwahab, the incumbent vice mayor of Talitay, has been detained since September in connection with his alleged illegal drugs business.More than a thousand villagers were displaced in the raid of Sabal’s house by hundreds of policemen, agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and personnel of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division.Soldiers on Tuesday found crew-served weapons, mortar launchers and shoulder-fire grenades in a hidden armory of Sabal, supposedly now in his third term as mayor of Talitay, which became a major transshipment point for shabu after he got to the helm of its LGU six years ago.Officials of the Army’s 601st Brigade confirmed on Tuesday that two .50 caliber machineguns, four .30 caliber machine guns, two 81-millimeter mortar launchers and a 60-millimeter launcher were recovered in a house built by Sabal for his partisan armed group.