Traditional Elites and the Post-Rebellion Establishment
By 1980, with the end of the active rebellion and the relaxation of stringent military rule, the datus of Cotabato had reestablished themselves to a remarkable degree in positions of political power. Members of datu families long allied with President Marcos held positions as minister of Muslim Affairs (a recently created cabinet-level post), representative to the Batasang Pambansa (or National Congress, created in 1978 by presidential decree), and governor of the province. Members of datu families more recently affiliated with the Marcos regime (i.e., since the declaration of martial law) held positions as provincial board member, regional assemblyman, and chairman of the Philippine
Amanah Bank (a government development bank operated on Islamic guidelines), and as vice-mayor and city council member of Cotabato City. Additionally, rebel returnees who were members of datu families held prominent positions in the regional autonomous government. In all, six of eight regional assemblymen from Maguindanao Province were members of prominent datu families,[15] and six of the seven officers of the provincial committee of the ruling party, the KBL (Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, or New Society Movement), were traditional elites. Of seventeen municipalities in Maguindanao Province, twelve were headed by datus. On the whole, traditional elites appeared to have survived martial law and the Bangsamoro Rebellion with little permanent damage to their political capabilities. With effective one-party rule and an increase in development funds channeled from the central government to Cotabato, the political positions of many collaborating datus were, in fact, more secure and potentially more profitable than before martial law.
Datu Ali Dimaporo, the Maranao governor of the neighboring province of Lanao Del Sur, anchored the government-datu alliance throughout Muslim Mindanao. Dimaporo's ties with President Marcos had made him both enormously wealthy (his holdings reportedly included apartment buildings in Los Angeles) and a national political figure. He ruled his province as a traditional domain and maintained a sizable private army. By the early 1980s, Ali Dimaporo was widely acknowledged to be the most powerful politician in Mindanao. He not only had a direct line to the presidential palace (he was, it was said, the only Muslim whom President Marcos really trusted) but maintained a warm relationship with the Philippine military. He flew on military airplanes, gave his blessings to military operations against Muslim rebels, and reportedly engaged in mutually beneficial business deals with high military officers. He was the leader of the KBL in Mindanao and the sole gatekeeper between the Marcos regime and Mindanao Muslims. All successful petitions by Muslims to the Marcos administration were said to pass through him.
In August 1982, Ferdinand Marcos appointed Dimaporo as the only Muslim member of the National Executive Committee—a body that served in a special advisory role to the president (McAmis 1983). Later in the year Dimaporo—whose genealogical claims to nobility were equivocal at best—arranged to have his preeminent political role in Mindanao traditionally validated. He had himself "enthroned" as "His Royal Highness, the Sultan of Masiu" (in some accounts, as the
Sultan of all the Sultans) in a lavish ceremony attended by President and Mrs. Marcos and much of the traditional nobility of Muslim Mindanao (McAmis 1983).[16] The self-proclamation of All Dimaporo is credited with encouraging a series of similar proclamations in Cotabato. Old titles were resurrected and new "royal descendants" organizations sprang up at a rapid rate between 1982 and 1986.
The collaborating datus of Cotabato and the administration they served provided few, if any, discernible services to ordinary Muslims between 1980 and 1986. The Regional Autonomous Government had no power of taxation and little government money to spend. Most of what budget it had was spent on itself. The expansive RAG complex at the edge of the city included, among other things, a bowling alley and tennis courts for the use of representatives and employees. Because the RAG had no real power or funds to implement projects, it was viewed by many as simply an "unnecessary, expensive bottleneck to getting projects approved and implemented" (McAmis 1983, 37). The agency established by the martial law administration to manage economic development in the Muslim South—the Southern Philippines Development Authority—was, by 1980, officially headed by Imelda Marcos. Its only recognizable accomplishment in Cotabato City was a large housing development located just south of the city, not far from the RAG complex. The prices of homes built there were far beyond the economic capabilities of low-income families. Virtually all were owned by middle-income government employees.
Government assistance to residents of Campo Muslim was scarce and irregular. A number of government projects had been promised over the years in the community, and some had even been initiated, but none was ever fully implemented. The only governmental material assistance I witnessed in Campo Muslim occurred during the 1986 presidential election campaign when a KBL campaign van arrived in Campo Muslim to distribute free medicine. A large crowd of residents gathered and signed their names on KBL lists in order to receive medicines marked prominently with labels that read: "For government use, not for sale." I heard stories of other assistance provided during election campaigns by certain local officeholders seeking reelection who installed streetlights or water pumps in the community. The only regular service provided by Datu Kamsa, the barangay captain, was adjudication. During the time I lived in Campo Muslim, Datu Kamsa began to charge money for his adjudication services, ostensibly to discourage frivolous claims.
The opposed political coalitions I have just described did not constitute neatly delineated camps. They were, for one, thoroughly crosscut by kin connections. The complex political attachments among Zacaria Candao—the leader of the opposition alliance—and his datu relatives (some of whom live in or near Campo Muslim) provide illustration. Candao and Datu Kamsa—the barangay captain of Campo Muslim and a Marcos loyalist—were second cousins. Datu Kamsa was opposed in the 1980 election for barangay captain by Datu Mokamad, his first cousin who was also the first cousin and close ally of Zacaria Candao. The election was fiercely contested, with community observers remarking that had the two candidates not been so closely related there would surely have been bloodshed. The brother of Datu Mokamad, Datu Simeon, had joined the KBL and occupied a high provincial office. Another brother, Datu Monib, fought with the rebels and still actively supported the MILE As a direct descendent of the Umarmaya sa Magindanao, one of the highest officeholders of the Magindanao Sultanate, Zacaria Candao possessed a closer descent relationship to the Magindanao core nobility than any of his datu cousins, yet he had chosen not to call himself "datu."
Such tangled relationships demonstrate that political loyalties did not divide cleanly along family lines, with the result that close relatives were sometimes aligned with bitterly opposed political factions. While I found no direct evidence that such alignments were the outcome of family-based strategies to spread political risk, the presence of close relatives among one's political antagonists did undoubtedly facilitate not only interfactional communication but also personal political realignment under changed conditions. The one clearly discernible kinbased political pattern in post-rebellion Cotabato was found among members of the most powerful and well-established datu families in the province, who tended overwhelmingly to align with the government-datu coalition.