MARAWI CITY: Barely a few weeks before the second anniversary of the Marawi siege, President Rodrigo R. Duterte announced that he would not spend government money for the rehabilitation of the ruined city and said he would leave it to rich residents whom he called many of them illegal drug lords. Rightly or wrongly, his might be a matter of semantics.
The president’s sudden announcement caught the Maranaos in shock for it runs contrary to what he had always been saying in two years that he would bring back the city to its former grandeur before it was devastated and that the government had set aside a budget for the rehabilitation.
On Thursday, May 23, 2019, will be the second anniversary of the 2017 Marawi Siege, the devastating phenomenon that has engulfed Marawi leaving it still in ruins and thousands of displaced families still suffering in government-provided tents and temporary shelters with relief supplies decreasing every day.
But the world might have already forgotten it and some might have thought that after two years, the sons and daughters of Marawi might have already been conditioned to gradually accept as natural and normal the consequence of the tragedy and live along with it.
Even then, the scars left by the siege will remain forever a mark, always reminding the tragedy that befell the Islamic city ever since the Maranaos were conceived as a people -- how their lives, homes, and property were shattered and destroyed, even lost.
Estimates said that between one and two thousand people were killed, and property looted or destroyed amounted to several billion dollars.
This is their real world today that the outside world might not have known exactly.
Marawi used to be a thriving city
Before the siege, Marawi was a thriving capital city of the province of Lanao del Sur with a population of about 400,000. The people of Marawi are called the Maranaos and speak the Maranao language. They are named after 'Ranao' which means 'Lake' upon whose shores Marawi lies.
Marawi City is used to be known as 'Dansalan' which was then the capital of the undivided Lanao province before it was divided into Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur in 1956 by an act of Congress. Dansalan renamed Marawi became the capital of Lanao del Sur and Iligan the capital of Lanao del Norte.
Marawi was believed to be the remaining frontier of Islamic civilization in the country housing big mosques, Islamic schools and cultural centers. It is the host of the country's southern premier state university, the Mindanao State University (MSU).
Marawi still a ghost town
Whatever is being told about Marawi after the siege, the fact remains that its commercial and cultural images were desecrated and that the only Islamic city in the Philippines remains a ghost town and still a 'no man's land' where no one is allowed to enter without military permission.
Erin Tañada, when he visited Marawi with fellow Otso Diretso senatorial bet Samira Gutoc and talked to residents living in temporary shelters and tents observed that the city “remains a ghost town.”
“From what I saw, there has hardly been any change at ground zero. The houses, commercial establishments, government offices, mosques remain in rubbles,” Tañada said.
He asked: “Where are the billions of pesos in rehabilitation funds allocated to rebuild Marawi?”
He said that as of April 2018, the government had released about P5.2 billion for rehabilitation efforts of the once commercial and cultural capital.
Tañada's observation was just among the many expressed by others who had seen personally the situation.
As of this posting, Ground Zero or what is also called the Most Affected Area (MAA) still remains a "no man's land" and the rehabilitation allegedly started by the Task Force Bangon Marawi (TFBM) is hardly felt by the internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Del Rosario blamed
Local civil society groups and traditional leaders blame the displaced residents’ prolonged agony in the evacuation centers on the government’s slow response for the reconstruction of Marawi.
The five-month siege of Marawi, launched on May 23, 2017, by the Maute and Abu Sayyaf bandits who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State jihadi group in Iraq and Syria, uprooted at least 360,000 residents of the city.
And as of March 2019, around 70,000 people from 12,768 families continue to suffer in squalid evacuation centers, transitional shelters, or in staying with relatives elsewhere.
It took Task Force Bangon Marawi (TFBM), the group organized to handle the reconstruction, more than a year since the Marawi liberation on October 17, 2017, to break ground for the gargantuan job of rebuilding the main battle zone.
And almost 18 months after liberation, the area, with 24 villages and spanning 250 hectares, remains a sorry, horrific sight.
The displaced families are now putting the blame on retired general Eduardo del Rosario, TFBM chair, accusing him of incompetence and insensitivity. And they demanded his resignation.
Crying to return homes, the evacuees are enraged over the delay in the rehabilitation. This is not the first time they have expressed their sentiments not only on the delay but also on the government indifference to their appeal to return home and take part in the rebuilding of the city.
The Suara Miyamagoyag (Voice of the Evacuees), said to be 16,000-strong group of IDPs headed by Datu Meno D. Manabilang, sought del Rosario to resign because they feel their real situation does not reach the government and suspected some corruption in the rehabilitation.
They asked former Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) director general Guiling Mamondiong during his meeting with them recently to relay to President Rodrigo Roa Duterte their real situation as the president might not be aware of it.
Maranao leaders favor del Rosario's resignation
Lanao del Sur 2nd District representative Mauyag Papandayan Jr. said that he favored the resignation of del Rosario, saying he did not understand “what is taking them (TFBM) so slow for the rehabilitation when there has been a large amount of money for such.”
Papandayan who is running for re-election this coming May 2019 polls under the banner of PDP Laban said, “Marawi rehabilitation is slower than those of Yolanda and the Sendong affected areas but the money for the Marawi rehab is almost finished.”
He said even the amount of P53,000 intended for the displaced families from the Marawi most affected area is not yet released by TFBM.
Papandayan lamented that del Rosario is not inviting him. “I have requested for many important papers and documents for validation but he did not give me,” he added.
Former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) vice Governor Haroun Alrashid Lucman, Jr. has always questioned how TFBM is handling the Marawi crisis from day one to this date.
Lucman said how could they entrust their lives to TFBM composed of people from Luzon and elsewhere who had not even set foot on the city before?
“It’s time a Maranao or one sympathetic to us takes his (del Rosario’s) place,” he added.
When the media reported the demand for del Rosario's resignation, however, TFBM immediately released the long-overdue P53,000 for each displaced family in the MAA with an additional amount of P20,000 from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) that made it P73,000 in all.
It is believed the snowballing demand for del Rosario's resignation has fast-tracked the release of P73,000 to each displaced person who passed the biometric process undertaken by TFBM to validate the IDP identity.
The process was burdensome but at least the amount released has eased a little the suffering of the evacuees.
TFBM also released a sari-sari kits worth of P15,000 to start a small household business.
TFBM had also promised that the evacuees coming from the Ground Zero can go to their homes in Ground Zero on September 1 if they cannot wait for the government to rebuild their homes and they want to reconstruct their homes by themselves provided they have the permits from the local government unit.
TFBM has one Maranao cabinet member
The only Maranao member of TFBM is Presidential adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and Muslim concerns Abdullah D. Mama-o representing the Office of the President in the TFBM composition.
A native of Marawi, Mama-o who is also the presidential envoy to Kuwait preferred to say ‘no comment’ on the slow-pace of the rehabilitation when asked by this reporter during the BARMM's inauguration in Cotabato City. His gesture is taken as a hint that he has ‘no influence’ in the Task Force.
It can be construed when National Commission on Muslim Filipinos (NCMF) secretary Saidamen Balt Pangarungan suddenly appeared in the Marawi Siege scenario starting with the filing of the Marawi Reparation Bill in Congress which through his lawmaker friends.
Instead of Secretary Mama-o, Pangarungan is the one seen in TFBM's recent consultations with the IDPs and in the releasing of the long-awaited cash assistance.to most affected evacuees of the siege.
Reparation Bill for the Marawi Siege Victims
The reparation bill was filed in both chambers of Congress -- in the House by Lanao del Sur 2nd district representative Mauyag Papandayan Jr. under House Bill No. 8099, and in the Senate by Senator Paolo "Bam" Aquino IV through S. No.1816.
The proposed bill recognizes the suffering and hardship of the civilians affected by the Marawi siege.
It provides that any owner of a residential house, commercial building and other properties in Marawi’s main affected areas and other affected areas shall receive compensation from the State, free of tax.
It allocates P30-Billion funding for the implementation of the proposed “Marawi Siege Victims Reparation Act of 2018.”
The fund shall be included in the annual General Appropriations Act (GAA) for the next three years in three equal amounts.
HB 8099 also seeks the creation of a nine-man Marawi Crisis Reparation Board (MRB) , which is tasked to receive, evaluate, process and investigate applications for claims under the proposed Act.
Unfortunately, the bills did not gain merits to be passed in this Congress.
Pinning hope on the BARMM
Earlier, other Maranao leaders had sought for the abolition of TFBM for its alleged failure to rebuild the city almost two years after it was devastated.
Accusing the TFBM leadership of “incompetence,” they said they were pinning their hope on the newly established Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) to rehabilitate Marawi City.
They also chided del Rosario for denying that Marawi is a ghost city (as published by The Washington Post in February) and calling it instead alive and booming.
But del Rosario found an ally in the Marawi traditional leaders. The Marawi Sultanate League (MSL) said the city is not a “ghost town” and insisted that there was normalcy in most parts of Marawi.
The league said only the 24 barangay (villages) of the most affected area (MAA) remain isolated and unsafe because of unexploded ordnances buried there when the IS-Maute sieged the city.
Last December, the league conferred on del Rosario the title of Son of Marawi Sultans which received negative reactions from other traditional leaders.
The present Sultan of Marawi Abdul Hamidullah Atar questioned the moral authority of the League in proclaiming del Rosario as its son without conferring with the other sultans and traditional leaders of Marawi.
“By normalcy, we mean that generally, the people are enjoying tranquility in their homes and are peacefully engaged in their usual business or livelihood undertakings,” the MSL said.
With the way the government is presently undertaking the Marawi rehabilitation, keen observers doubted if the displaced Maranaos of the devastating Marawi Siege of 2017 can ever come back to their homes at least not in the coming year or two. (MNY)
(Masiding Noor Yahya, acclaimed Dean of Mranaw Journalists, is a son of Marawi, the Philippine southern city that was devastated by the 2017 Marawi Siege perpetrated by the Dawah Islamiyah-inspired Maute Group and allied terrorists. He is the founder of Ranao Star Philippines, the only Marawi City-based weekly newspaper, and a correspondent of The Manila Times, the Philippines oldest English daily.)