Chapter 10
Muslim Nationalism after Marcos

The years between 1981 and 1986 saw the gradual reconstitution of the Muslim nationalist movement in Cotabato. While it lacked the strength for sustained armed engagements with the Philippine military, the MILF, with hundreds of armed fighters in secure mountain camps, remained a threat to the martial law government. On the basis of that continued threat its leaders pushed for the full implementation of the agreement signed in Tripoli. The MILF's diplomatic and publicity efforts were aided by a steadily developing aboveground alliance of Muslim professionals and clerics led by Zacaria Candao. During the same period, the Philippine Army gradually withdrew from the Muslim South to fight a communist-led armed insurgency that, by 1984, effectively controlled the rural hinterlands in large portions of the country.^[1]

Muslim establishment elites (most of them datus), also took advantage of the loosening of military rule in Cotabato to reestablish local power bases. Establishment elites cooperated with the Marcos regime in attempting to convince external observers and (to a much lesser extent) local subordinates, that the rebellion was over, Muslim autonomy had been achieved, and the gains of that autonomy were being channeled to the Muslims of Cotabato. As described in the previous chapter, the cultural-political activities of both alliances in the first half of the decade reflected a gradual awareness—much more fully comprehended by the opposition alliance—that popular support was likely to become a decisive factor for those who wished to rule Muslim Cotabato.

The collapse of the Marcos regime in early 1986 brought a quickening of political activity in Cotabato. Most Muslim establishment figures lost their government positions, although a few held on to them or, improbably, acquired new ones.^[2] Members of the datu establishment hurried to form local chapters of new or revived national parties to prepare for promised congressional and provincial elections. For its part, the Muslim opposition alliance found itself instantly propelled into the official political arena when its organizer, Zacaria Candao, was concurrently appointed governor of the province and chairman of the regional autonomous government. The MILF's goal of genuine autonomy for Philippine Muslims also seemed suddenly close at hand. The prospects for the full implementation of the Tripoli Agreement were significantly enhanced when Corazon Aquino, the widow of the Christian politician who had been the most strongly supportive of Muslim aspirations for self-determination, assumed the presidency of the Philippine republic.

In this chapter I draw together the themes presented in the previous two in order to present a detailed account of Muslim politics in post-Marcos Cotabato. I proceed by considering four political events: two mass rallies held in 1986 and two election campaigns—one for provincial governor and the other for city offices—conducted in 1988. Two new political features intersect in these events. First, each of the four political events included the active participation of the Muslim urban poor. That participation was diversely motivated and varied in form. Politicians made appeals to them, and made use of them, but in one event at least, the actions of poor Muslims surprised the Muslim elites who sought their cooperation. Second, three of the four events featured the unprecedented use of Islamic rhetoric (often voiced by Islamic clerics) in direct political appeals. It is the interplay between those two novel features of Muslim nationalist politics in the post-martial-law period that focuses this chapter.

The Tagumpay Ng Bayan Rally: Popular Protest and the Ascendancy of the Muslim Counterelite

The Tagumpay ng Bayan (People's Victory) Rally was the first major political event of the post-Marcos period in Cotabato City. The rally, which took place in the Cotabato City plaza on February 26, 1986, was similar to many political gatherings held throughout the Philippines

that day. It had been planned as a popular protest against the apparent theft of the presidential election by Ferdinand Marcos but was quickly transformed into a victory celebration after the so-called people power coup earlier that week induced the flight of Marcos to the United States on the twenty-fifth, the day before the scheduled protest rally. As a result, Corazon Aquino, his electoral opponent, assumed the presidency, ending the fourteen-year Marcos dictatorship.

The rally capped an exhilarating month for Cotabateños, including the residents of Campo Muslim. Even those community members who had most vocally professed disinterest in the 1986 "snap" presidential election were swept up in the contagious excitement of election day, February 7, and its aftermath. Local observers remarked on the unusual level of enthusiasm in the city for a presidential election, comparable to that generated by a local election. One reason for the high excitement was that the 1986 voting represented the first genuinely contested presidential election in seventeen years, the last having occurred in 1969, prior to the declaration of martial law.^[3]

At the polling place closest to Campo Muslim the mood was festive. Children played while parents searched for their names on voting lists and cast their ballots. Young adults, most of whom had never voted in a national election, excitedly shared information. Elders lounged beneath trees drinking coffee and discussing politics. Later in the evening, after the polls had closed, Campo Muslim residents gathered in clusters on the main road to discuss the local results, exchange rumors, and listen to reports on the radio.

In Cotabato City, the challenger, Corazon Aquino, won in the polls by more than a two-to-one margin, while in the rest of Maguindanao Province Ferdinand Marcos led by an even greater, three to one, margin. The election in the city proceeded peacefully and without obvious irregularities or alleged incidents of voter fraud. The problem-free city polling was due in great measure to the work of volunteer poll-watchers from the provincial chapter of the National Citizen's Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), a nongovernmental organization established to monitor elections. NAMFREL first appeared in the Philippines in the early 1950s but was dissolved with the enactment of martial law in 1972. It reformed after the assassination of Benigno Aquino in 1983, with the assistance of unacknowledged American funding (Bonner 1987), and fielded an unusually effective nationwide force of volunteers in 1986 to monitor the presidential election in every province in the country. The NAMFREL volunteers at the large

polling place near Campo Muslim consisted entirely of young Campo Muslim residents recruited by Kasan Kamid, a community organizer. They helped ensure that the 1986 election was conducted more freely than any other in the memory of Campo Muslim residents.

Election day conditions in the rest of the province differed dramatically from those in the city, in part because NAMFREL managed to place poll-watchers at only a small percentage of precincts. For most municipalities in the province, the 1986 election procedures differed little from those found in Muslim municipalities since the beginning of the republic. In a number of municipalities, polling places reported 100 percent voter turnouts with all ballots cast in favor of President Marcos. In some precincts Ferdinand Marcos received more votes than the number of registered voters. In at least one municipality—Barira—NAMFREL volunteers reported that all available ballots were cast the night before the election by barangay captains. In these municipalities, President Marcos led his opponent by margins as great as sixteen to one. In other municipalities voting went on with little interference, but local officials appropriated ballot boxes when they arrived at the municipal hall and conducted the vote count in secret. All seventeen municipalities in the province recorded that Ferdinand Marcos had received many more votes than Corazon Aquino.

This well-organized voting fraud represented the last major endeavor of the KBL political machine in the province—part of a highly integrated national system for channeling significant amounts of money to political officials down to the barangay level to ensure a Marcos victory.^[4] Despite the success of the machine in appropriating votes throughout the province, the 1986 election also saw the first significant challenges to the autocratic grip of traditional leaders on the election process. Those challenges most often came from young, urban-educated Muslims anxious for change. The following account presents the voice of Salik, a young member of a Muslim counterelite family, who returned to his birthplace from the city to monitor the election there for the opposition coalition, United Nationalist Democratic Organizations (UNIDO—see below). It is typical of three or four similar stories I heard following the election: "I was the UNIDO representative in my home barangay in Sulun. I spoke strongly there. The barangay captain almost cried when I opposed him. He told me: 'If we let people decide for themselves this year, Marcos will receive no votes and I'll be in trouble. Let's negotiate and make the results an even split.' I agreed to the 50–50 arrangement because the barangay

captain is my relative. At the counting, the barangay captain wanted the results to show that Marcos had won by three votes but I insisted that there be an exactly even distribution as we had agreed."

A major impetus behind these new challenges was Zacaria Candao, the provincial chairman—for Maguindanao Province and Cotabato City—of UNIDO, the national opposition coalition that backed the candidacy of Corazon Aquino. Candao approached that difficult job with alacrity, relishing a direct electoral confrontation with establishment elites. He successfully associated the UNIDO platform with Muslim aspirations, even reconciling the nonparticipatory stand of the MILF—with whom he remained closely associated—with his own obvious electoral activism. He also arranged the defection to UNIDO of some Muslim KBL politicians, adding to the momentum of the UNIDO campaign in the city and province. Candao drew on his aboveground support network, as well as some assistance from the officially neutral MILF, to counter coercive moves by the KBL and to reduce somewhat the incidence of election fraud in the province.

Aquino supporters in the city and province watched intensely the unfolding post-election drama in Manila, expressing first hope, then frustration, and finally outrage, as Aquino, who had outpolled Marcos by a large margin in Cotabato City and a number of other provincial urban areas, was unaccountably falling behind in the official tallying in Manila. The three main political groups active in Aquino's Cotabato City victory met to organize a mass rally, coordinated with similar events nationwide, to protest the regime's increasingly conspicuous efforts to thwart the popular will by tampering with the national vote tabulation. The provincial chapter of UNIDO was composed largely of the Muslim counterelite under the leadership of Zacaria Candao. Members of the local chapter of Lakas ng Bayan (LABAN), the People's Power Party—a component of the UNIDO coalition and the specific party of Corazon Aquino—were almost entirely Christian and middle class, many of the most active of them women. There was also the Cotabato affiliate of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN), the New Nationalist Alliance—a federation of aboveground progressive nationalist organizations. Although BAYAN officially boycotted the presidential election, the (mostly Christian) members of its local chapter were active in the local NAMFREL chapter and almost all them had volunteered as NAMFREL poll-watchers or coordinators.

Although the rally as originally planned was to have equal participation from each of the three groups, it acquired a very different struc-

ture with the news of Marcos's departure. Anger gave way to exhilaration as citizens celebrated the toppling of the dictatorship. The rally transformed itself into a victory ceremony for the Muslim counterelite and an occasion to acclaim its leader, Zacaria Candao: a man who, overnight, had become the most powerful political figure—Muslim or Christian—in the province.

Although Muslims comprised less than half of the registered voters in Cotabato City, they formed the large majority of the crowd of more than fifteen thousand that overflowed the city plaza. Zacaria Candao, the featured speaker at the rally, addressed the crowd in untranslated Magindanaon—a language understood by almost none of the Christians present.^[5] He spoke first of the new hope for the genuine implementation of the Tripoli Agreement under the Aquino government. He called for continued cooperation between Muslims and Christians, and for reconciliation, as well as wholehearted support for the new president. Among the numerous other speakers was a prominent ustadz, who may have been the first independent Muslim cleric ever to have spoken at a political rally from the stage of the city plaza.

Kasan Kamid and a group of Campo Muslim residents also shared the plaza stage with Zacaria Candao and other newly important politicians. They had marched to the rally with Candao at his request and stood on the stage that, just two weeks before, had been occupied by Sultan Ali Dimaporo and the leading Muslim KBL politicians of Mindanao. The world as viewed from that platform for a few exhilarating minutes seemed indeed to have been turned upside down.

While it is not clear to what extent Zacaria Candao planned his own sudden victory celebration, he did organize the highly symbolic march that preceded it. The plan for the original rally called for participants to march from different parts of the city to the central plaza. Candao chose to march from Campo Muslim. Early on the day before the rally he contacted Kasan Kamid as well as two young Islamic activists from the community who had helped to organize the student demonstration at the da'wah parade in 1985. He asked them to gather their "people" to participate in the march and rally. It was decided that one of the Islamic activists would give a speech at the rally representing the "Muslim Youth," and that Kasan would speak on behalf of the "Urban Poor."

The next day, thirty or so Campo Muslim marchers, more than a third of them women, assembled in the main road of the community. They wore yellow or green headbands—the colors of Corazon

Aquino's campaign and Islam, respectively—and carried banners and placards, some of them recycled from the da'wah parade. One of the new banners read in translation: "Forget the Old Politics and Confront the [Economic] Crisis."^[6] When assembled, the Campo Muslim contingent filed to the intersection of the main community road and the riverside road. There they were joined by groups from the neighboring Muslim areas of Lugay-lugay and Kalanganan. When Candao arrived with his bodyguard, the parade commenced and streamed jubilantly through the city streets to the sound of drums and shouted slogans and the cheers of onlookers. It was the largest and most joyous of all the processions to the plaza.

When Zacaria Candao mounted the stairs to the large stage in the center of the Plaza, a number of his fellow paraders from Campo Muslim climbed with him. As the afternoon's speeches continued one after the other, however, a surprisingly familiar pattern emerged. The microphone was dominated by establishment politicians, almost all of them datus and many of them KBL stalwarts one or two months earlier. The podium was given over, time and again, to datu politicians who were recent defectors from the KBL to UNIDO. In a uniform fashion they called for genuine autonomy for Philippine Muslims, congratulated themselves for having been part of the UNIDO opposition, and attempted to excuse or obscure their activities during the rebellion. As the rally wore on, and the crowd waited for Candao to speak, the Campo Muslim group drifted down from the stage. When I rejoined them they were sitting off to the side, in the shade. I asked them why they had moved down and they grumbled that they were tired and it was hot up above. It was clear from their faces, however (an impression confirmed in later conversations), that they had also begun to feel discouraged and out of place, and so left the stage. The rally ended before either Kasan or Nur Miskin, the Islamic activist, was able to deliver his speech. By the end of the day it was unmistakably evident to the Campo Muslim marchers that many in the new UNIDO ascendancy had not forgotten "the old politics."

The favoring of recently defected datus over ordinary urban supporters suggests that as the purpose of the rally changed from protest to victory proclamation, Candao's political needs shifted accordingly. The rally, as originally conceived, was to have been the first mass protest in a series of urban actions—including general strikes—called by the national opposition to denounce the theft of the election. Candao needed to mobilize his mass urban base to carry out such popular

protests, and had done so. When it was learned that the objective had been achieved, the protest became a victory rally and an occasion for Candao to begin to repay his datu allies.

In a conversation with him a short while after the victory rally, Candao indicated the reason for his reliance on the support of formerly establishment datus: "There is a problem finding new political leaders. My contemporaries all joined the KBL. In the election campaign I had a difficult time recruiting municipal UNIDO campaign chairmen. I was not afraid myself because I had the support of the MILF, but I cannot really blame others for hesitating. Other than the powerful families there were no organizations to protect people." Although there was ample political support for UNIDO in the city, for the difficult and dangerous electoral campaign in the countryside there were few available political allies other than those traditional elite politicians who took calculated risks based on personal political ambition and switched their allegiance from the KBL to UNIDO. As a result, the first public manifestation of the new, post-Marcos politics in the province was difficult to distinguish from the old.

Notwithstanding the remarkable persistence of datu politicians in Cotabato, there were to be two very significant innovations in Muslim politics—both prefigured in Candao's victory rally—in the post-Marcos period. The first was the self-conscious political use made of ordinary Muslims (and especially the "urban poor"), and the second was the introduction, for the first time in the modern era, of specifically Islamic elements—from green headbands to speechmaking by ustadzes—in public political discourse. Those two new features were combined in a most original form in the next major political event in Cotabato.

Muslim Mass Action: The MILF "Prayer Rally"

By the end of March 1986, Zacaria Candao had attained unprecedented authority in the region. He had been designated by the new national administration as both acting governor of the province of Maguindanao and acting chairman of the Executive Council of the Regional Autonomous Government for Central Mindanao. The MILF, in contrast, had, by late March, been repeatedly frustrated in its efforts at national-level recognition as a result of the nearly exclusive attention paid by the Philippine government and national media to the original MNLF under Nur Misuari. Misuari had shown no inclination to

reunite the separate rebel factions under one banner to present a united negotiating front and, for its part, the government of Corazon Aquino appeared willing to reopen formal talks with Misuari's group alone on regional autonomy as outlined in the Tripoli Agreement.

In the competition for government recognition as the legitimate representative of the Bangsamoro insurgents—and, by extension, of the "Bangsamoro people"—Misuari's MNLF held a number of advantages. Misuari was a signatory to the Tripoli accord while Salamat was not. Misuari had also met for a series of talks with Benigno Aquino in Damascus in 1981, and later, after Aquino's assassination in 1983, with his younger brother, Agapito, in Madrid. He was therefore more familiar to President Aquino and her advisors. In addition, as a result of a long history of media coverage, Misuari and the MNLF were both more familiar to Philippine Christians and more skilled in the techniques of obtaining media access than were Salamat and the MILF.^[7]

By late March 1986, the MILF in Cotabato had decided to demonstrate to the Aquino administration exactly why it should be given due consideration. In self-conscious imitation of the Manila "people power" demonstrations that forced the flight of Ferdinand Marcos and brought Corazon Aquino to power, the MILF chose to stage a mass rally. As portrayed by Zacaria Candao in our interview, the MILF rally was conceived as an "exercise to determine if [the MILF] still had the support of the masses." As the MILF remained, at least formally, an illegal organization, its preparations for what became known as the "prayer rally" were carried out through the public leadership of the aboveground ulama.^[8] The chairman of the organizing committee for the rally, like the rest of its official organizers, was a prominent aboveground ustadz. It was nevertheless clear to all concerned that it was the MILF leadership initiating and sponsoring the rally.

Campo Muslim residents were among those who participated in the preparations for the MILF rally. In the last week of March, an organizational meeting for the heads of Muslim student and community organizations was held at the public market mosque, attended by more than fifty people including Kasan Kamid and the two Islamic activists from Campo Muslim, Nur Miskin and Zamin Unti. Most of those in attendance had received letters inviting them to a meeting sponsored by "the Bangsamoro People."

One week later, about thirty of those attending the previous meeting were invited "inside" to the MILF camp in the mountains north of the city. They rode jeeps or pedicabs to the end of the road and walked

three kilometers uphill to reach the camp. Some five hundred people attended that meeting, including community leaders and ustadzes from throughout Cotabato. The "facilitator" for the meeting was Hadji Murad, the commander of the Cotabato MILF forces. His minister of information was also present. They presented the formal objectives of the rally and described the form it would take. The participants, arriving from all parts of Cotabato, would march to the city plaza from different directions. Various areas of origin were identified by zone numbers corresponding to the zones of operation enumerated by the rebels during the armed insurgency. Ustadz Omar Pasigan, the founder of the Mahad in Campo Muslim and the finance chairman for the rally, noted that the expenses for the rally would total about seventy-five thousand pesos (approximately four thousand dollars), and he assessed individual organizations (mostly madrasahs) various sums to finance transportation, food, medicine, and placards. Those organizations would in turn collect contributions of goods and services from individuals.

Organizers began announcing the rally on Magindanaon-language radio programs just one week before it was scheduled to take place. Broadcast messages tended to be quite vague, announcing only that there would be "activities" (pedsuwan-suwan ) in the city of Cotabato beginning on April 13. Announcers neither reported the purpose of the rally nor the fact that it was sponsored by the MILF, but did name the ustadzes involved in its organization. More precise news of the rally spread rapidly by word of mouth in Campo Muslim. Although there was never a formal announcement of the rally during Friday congregational prayers in the mosque, community residents quickly became aware that this was an MILF rally in support of Hashim Salamat and the full implementation of the Tripoli Agreement. I included a question about the prayer rally on a formal instrument I administered later to a random sample of community household heads. Of 122 interviewees, 93 (76.2 percent) reported that they had attended the rally. Another 8 (6.6 percent) replied that they were unable to attend but had contributed goods or services to rally organizers.

The gathering they attended was indeed an impressive display of organizational capability. With between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand people attending the prayer rally on each of its three days, it was by far the largest, and longest, mass demonstration ever staged in Cotabato City.^[9] MILF supporters poured into the center of the city, preventing most businesses on or near the plaza from operating

normally for two of the three days. Some 750 marshals appointed to control traffic and patrol the ranks of the rallyists effectively policed the entire central city for the duration of the rally. Marshals established checkpoints at the eight points of entry to the rally site and inspected parcels and conducted body searches of all individuals—participants or nonparticipants—entering the center of the city. Participants arrived from provinces as far away as South Cotabato and Davao Del Sur, but the majority of those present were reported to be from Maguindanao Province and Cotabato City. Most of the participants came at their own expense, carrying enough food for three or more days. From their headquarters at the Mahad in Campo Muslim, rally organizers arranged the stage program and managed the logistics of supervising a massive group of demonstrators.

On the opening day of the rally, the "mass media chairman"—also an ustadz—stated the objectives of the rally as follows:

1. To show the public, the government, and the world that the Bangsamoro people—Muslims, Christians, and the tribal Filipinos—support Hashim Salamat.

2. To respond to the peace and reconciliation leadership of President Corazon C. Aquino.

3. To push for the immediate and full implementation of the Tripoli Agreement of 1976 as the only sound and just political solution to the Mindanao problem.

4. To make known that before any implementation of the Tripoli Agreement there should first be negotiations between the MILF and the Philippine government.

5. Before these can be brought about, there should first be a strengthening of the cease-fire agreement (Mindanao Cross , April 19, 1986).

On the plaza stage, successive speakers—almost all of them ustadzes—called on the Aquino government to resume negotiations immediately with MILF leaders for the full implementation of the Tripoli accord under the auspices of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Some speakers vowed that the rallyists would remain in the plaza until President Aquino responded to their demands. Between speeches, and in the evenings, demonstrators were entertained by singers performing rebel and religious songs, but not dayunday. On the last day

of the rally, the demonstrators stood without complaint in the rain to listen to Zacaria Candao. Performing a dual role unique in the history of the Philippine republic, he both spoke in support of Hashim Salamat and the MILF and, in his capacity as government representative, accepted the manifesto of the rallyists for presentation to President Aquino.

Despite its impressive scale and coordination, the MILF rally drew almost no national media attention; only one Manila daily newspaper carried as much as a single short article on the mass demonstration. That lack of national notice was partly due to the extraordinarily Manila-centric focus of the national media but was also a consequence of the inexperience of the rally's organizers in attracting media attention. The rally also failed to prompt a specific response from the Aquino administration.

Unable to communicate effectively to the government or the Philippine public (let alone "the world") the extent of popular support in Cotabato for Salamat and the MILF, the prayer rally did not accomplish any of its stated objectives. Nevertheless, as an experiment to gauge the ability of its sponsors and organizers to mobilize Cotabato Muslims, it proved a tremendous success and doubtless influenced the next phase of Muslim nationalist politics in the region—the formation of an Islamic political party. To gain the attention of the national government and media, the MILF soon reverted to a well-practiced method and produced more favorable results.

Islam, Populism, and Electoral Politics: The 1988 Provincial Elections

I left Cotabato City in September 1986, and returned in January 1988 to observe the political campaigns for the provincial and municipal elections held in February. A number of important political events occurred in the intervening fifteen months, two of which deserve mention.

By January 1987, the MILF saw its interests directly threatened by two moves of the national government. The first involved a number of provisions in an article of the draft constitution to be voted on in early February 1987. The provisions concerned the formation of an autonomous region for "Muslim Mindanao." They stated that the proposed autonomous region would only become effective when approved by a majority of the votes cast in a special plebiscite called for that

purpose, thus ensuring that only provinces and cities voting favorably would be included in the autonomous region. In an "Official Declaration" in late December 1986, the MILF announced its rejection of the relevant article of the draft constitution because its provisions were not in keeping with the "true spirit of the Tripoli Agreement" and would not result in a "meaningful and genuine autonomy as envisioned in the duly-signed accord" (Mindanao Cross , December 20, 1986).

Second, the Aquino administration signaled that it had decided to resume formal negotiations with the MNLF, implicitly recognizing Misuari's group as the sole legitimate representative of the separatist movement. President Aquino had met personally with Nur Misuari in Sulu in September and, by early January, government representatives and MNLF negotiators were convening in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Governor Candao noted, in a January 3 newspaper report, that the MILF had been "driven to the corner" by its exclusion from the talks and by persistent government disregard of its proposals for a dialogue (Mindanao Cross , January 3, 1987). When the Jeddah negotiations produced a cease-fire agreement, Hadji Murad, the MILF chief of staff, warned of trouble should the Aquino government continue to deny the MILF the dialogue it had been asking for peacefully.

The following week, a few days before a scheduled trip by President Aquino to Cotabato, the MILF attacked, striking government targets in Cotabato City and other parts of Central Mindanao. Mortar shells fell in sections of the city and rebels burned the provincial capital building in Maganoy. Elsewhere in the region, power lines were cut, bridges burned, and police and army garrisons attacked. Twenty-five persons were reported killed in the fighting. President Aquino called an emergency cabinet meeting but decided not to cancel her trip to Mindanao. In Cotabato she met with Hadji Murad, and her chief negotiator arranged a temporary cease-fire with the MILE The editor of the local newspaper remarked later in an interview with me that there would almost certainly have been more destruction in the city from the MILF attacks had not Zacaria Candao been in position as acting governor.

The Islamic Party of the Philippines

A second notable political event—one more consequential in the long term—was the formation of a new political party, the Islamic Party of the Philippines (IPP). Despite its expansive title it was a provincial

party without formal ties to a national party apparatus or, for that matter, to any Islamic organizations in other parts of the Muslim South. The Islamic Party of the Philippines was organized in early 1987 at a meeting of the ulama of Cotabato called by Zacaria Candao. The published "program of government" of the IPP included the establishment of a meaningful autonomy in the "Bangsamoro Homeland," the eradication of "all forms of evil in the government and society," and the equitable distribution of wealth by preventing the "concentration of wealth in a privileged few hands." The program also contained a statement of belief that "Islam offers a complete basis for the solution of all human problems including socio-economic ones" (Mindanao Cross , April 11, 1987). Lanang Ali, the secretary-general of the party, was also legal counsel for the MILF, having succeeded Candao in that position.

Elections for the new Philippine Congress—the first opportunity to elect political representatives since the establishment of the new government—were held in May of 1987. The IPP contested the congressional elections and surprised the traditional Muslim elite when the politically unknown non-datu candidate they put forward for the congressional district that included Cotabato City outpolled a number of established datu politicians to place a close second behind the winning candidate. The winner, Datu Michael Mastura, was a member of the traditional core nobility and a nationally known figure who ran as the Aquino administration's candidate. A political moderate who had held various government positions throughout the armed rebellion, he had just concluded an assignment for the new administration as chairman of a presidential task force to examine the question of autonomy for Muslim Mindanao. He was well-known by most of the residents of Cotabato City—both Muslims and Christians—and well regarded by many of them. Nevertheless, he narrowly escaped defeat by a young political novice fielded by the IPP.

The strong showing of the IPP prompted the major datu families—including some who had been bitter enemies—to unite to an unprecedented degree to defeat Candao and the IPP in the January 1988 provincial elections. All concerned realized that the stakes were especially high. The overwhelmingly Muslim population of Maguindanao Province guaranteed that the province would be included in any Muslim autonomous region. Control of an autonomous province would depend on electoral support, so incumbents were sure to have an advantage. The political benefits that would accrue to the winner of the

1988 gubernatorial election provided a powerful inducement for cooperation within both the datu elite and counterelite coalitions. The threat to traditional elite interests represented by the IPP also caused Candao to lose many of the datu allies he had gained during his rise to political prominence in early 1986—including the Mastura family. The contest for the governorship set Candao, the appointed governor and administration (as well as IPP) candidate against Datu Simeon Datumanong, member of a prominent datu family, former governor, and onetime political mentor of Zacaria Candao. In at least three of its features, the 1988 electoral campaign for governor of Maguindanao Province was without precedent in Cotabato. It was the first electoral struggle between two clearly distinguished and ideologically opposed Muslim elite groups for the leadership of the province. Also, for the first time ever, Islamic discourse figured prominently in political appeals made to voters. As a consequence, religious disputes, such as that about the proper role of the ulama, were finally contested in public political debates. And third, because of the new national political atmosphere and the loss of exclusive control of the province by the datu elite, it was, in all likelihood, the most genuinely democratic election ever conducted in Muslim Cotabato.^[10]

Islamic Arguments in the Radio Campaign

Both electoral campaigns relied on radio speeches in Magindanaon as a primary means to present their views. Campo Muslim residents listened to many of those speeches with great interest. In addition to Candao himself and the members of his slate, the IPP campaign utilized two types of radio commentators: ustadzes and holders of traditional aristocratic titles. The traditional commentators for the IPP were acquired to balance the use of the same sort of commentators by the datu coalition. Traditional commentators for both candidates were holders of long-defunct hereditary offices of the Cotabato sultanates. They were authorities on taritib, the protocol governing relations within the aristocracy and among the traditional estates. They survived as dignitaries, old men with neither power nor real authority and a good deal less public influence than the ulama. They were, however, able to provide traditional legitimation as official spokesmen for the old ways. The traditional commentators for the datu coalition recited in detail the bloodlines of Datumanong and his slate. Those employed by the IPP, although not endorsing the leadership of the ulama, praised

Candao and referred to him as "datu"—a term that, as I have noted, he never used for himself.

While the ustadz commentators on the da'wah radio program emphasized that Candao was the choice of the ulama because he served the people, much of their radio time was spent responding to the sharp attacks of the datu coalition. The IPP was repeatedly criticized for injecting Islam into electoral politics—a practice their opponents characterized as Shi'a-inspired heterodoxy.^[11] Congressman Mastura, campaigning actively against the candidate endorsed by his own party, most cogently presented the objections of the datu coalition when he stated in his radio speech:

It is a Shi'a principle that the ulama participate directly in government. IPP, do not use Islam for politics. This is a Shi'a policy. In Iran, the ulama want to be political leaders. I am not suggesting that in Islam the ulama cannot participate in politics. However, if the ulama comprise the political leadership, there will be no one to preach. The ustadzes have no need to be elected. They already have positions. They are already persons of authority because they have much knowledge . . . We do not want to create ayatollahs or mullahs here in the Philippines. If we did, we would be diverting from the Sunna [the divinely inspired precedents of the Prophet] related by Imam Shafii [the founder of the school of Sunni law predominant throughout Southeast Asia]. We must follow the straight path.^[12]

An ustadz commentator offered the IPP response to those who, like Congressman Mastura, criticized the participation of the ulama in politics: "The right people to hold all political positions are people who fear God. Ulama participation in politics should not be criticized because such activity is their duty—to encourage those who do good, and discourage those who do evil. We have to determine who destroys us, who destroys Islam. We must determine who are our enemies. The principal duty of a Muslim is to correct mistakes, not by force but by one's words, one's heart." The ustadz also reminded voters that the IPP was a party of the many aligned against the advantaged few: "If you are weak by yourself, create an organization. Bring weak people together to resist a single powerful person who is doing wrong. We the weak people have grouped together to become strong. That is why we will vote for Candao because he represents the organization of the weak." The ustadz radio commentators also counterattacked by labeling Simeon Datumanong a "kafir" (unbeliever) because of his position as the Marcos-appointed governor of the province during the fiercest

fighting of the Bangsamoro Rebellion (conveniently overlooking the fact that Zacaria Candao succeeded Datumanong in the same position). Datumanong was often pressured into quite defensive attitudes when responding to these accusations, as illustrated by these excerpts from one of his radio speeches:

People have asked why, if I was with the government for twenty years, I could not achieve freedom for our people. I don't know what they mean by this statement, but if "freedom" means independence, I could not achieve that with my small government position. I am only an ordinary person. I did not have the authority to seek independence . . . My opponent has accused me of being a kafir and charges that I was the mastermind of military operations here during the rebellion. But I think if you know me you cannot believe those statements. In regard to my being a kafir: how can that be? I've been to Mecca, I pray, I fast, I give zakat. God knows what I am. Concerning the [military] operations, I did not order them. I had no authority. During that time, if there was an operation, I helped the evacuees. We provided medicine. We could not stop the operations. That was the character of the time. Do not blame me. It was a time of war. By blaming me you offend God.

The datu coalition attempted to deflect attention from Datumanong's long history of cooperation with the martial law regime by pointing to the potentially harmful consequences of Candao's close connections to the IPP and the MILE Congressman Mastura and his brother Tocao, a municipal mayor, led the radio offensive:

Candao and his party [the IPP] know nothing about government management. These people do not know how to govern. They have joined the government to destroy it. This is because of their desire for revolution. However, the "bomb" will fall on us . . . If we choose a strong man [referring to Simeon Datumanong], he could find the means for reconciliation [with the MILF]. But if we choose a leader whose mind is only on one side, and not on the welfare of all of the people [i.e., Zacaria Candao], then we cannot find peace in our region.

A few days ago [Candao] spoke in Darapanan [an MILF "liberated area"], and he told the people that those who support Simeon Datumanong don't know what revolution is about. He said that revolution is different from governing. If that is his opinion of revolution, then he should not be in the government because revolution is opposed to the government. If you are in government, and work for revolution, you can be charged with treason and shot by a firing squad . . . I warn the people of my municipality [literally: my relatives] do not join the IPP poll-watchers because there will probably be picture-taking [by the military] of IPP poll-watchers to identify MILF cadres. If this happens to you, you should not blame me. I have already helped many people out of jail. You will have done it to yourself—I am not threatening you.

Zacaria Candao responded succinctly to these accusations and admonitions when, in one of his radio addresses, he spoke obliquely of the affinity between the program of the IPP and the earlier goal of Ustadz Salamat to reform Muslim leadership: "If only those who were leaders twenty years ago had addressed the problems that were created in the previous twenty years, the Muslim people would have achieved real freedom. If they had led with the true governance of Islam, the struggles of the last twenty years would not have been necessary. But because they neglected those problems and abandoned the struggle, the young generation moved forward. Now the old politicians are scheming in order to recover the leadership again." He also replied pointedly to those who had referred to him as a misguided or disingenuous revolutionary:

Regarding those who say that if I am a revolutionary I should stay in the jungle: they say this because they do not understand what is meant by revolution. It is true that we do not see the problems the same way. They do not know what it means to change our society. Revolutionaries do not just fight in the forest or use firearms. There are many ways to achieve our goals. It can also be done by speaking—telling the truth. If all a person knows is to work with the government to minimize the suffering of the people and help achieve change, this too could further our cause. A truly brave man confronts his enemy face to face—mind to mind. But my opponents think revolution only means to hide from one's enemy. When they met the enemy [referring to Ferdinand Marcos] they did not confront him, they became his friend. That is something I could not do.

It was evident from listening to the radio campaign—itself unexampled in Cotabato politics—that Simeon Datumanong and the commentators who spoke for him were uncomfortable with the new electioneering style, one that required direct and extended appeals to a mass audience. Their discomfort with the new approach, and their tendency to revert to the political style of old, were evident in some of their speeches, as in this excerpt from one of Datumanong's:

We [i.e., Datumanong and his slate] know how to govern, how to deal with people. We are all winners because all the datus, all the strong families, all the liders [political brokers] are helping us. It is most obvious that the datus are helping us, especially the two congressmen [Datu Michael Mastura and Datu Guiamid Matalam, the son of Datu Udtug]. In regard to the ulama, they are helping us but are not doing so publicly because their support is in their hearts only. In our party are the most upright people. We believe in God. Even those powerful families who were fighting before are united behind me: the Masturas, the Sinsuats,

the Matalams. Because of that, after I am elected we will be able to develop peace and order.

Look at the former friends of Candao—individuals such as Guiamid Matalam, Michael Mastura, Rajamuda sa Magindanao [a traditional titleholder and acting Sultan of Magindanao], Didagan Dilangalen [all members of the traditional nobility]—and many of his own relatives. All have left him [literally: stopped going to him]. Why did they do that? If he were a good politician, his allies and relatives would not abandon him.

The radio speeches made it apparent that the definition of a "good politician" was itself a topic of contention in the new Muslim electoral politics of Cotabato.

Islamic Populism and Cultural Pluralism

The populist Islamic appeals of Candao and the IPP were as alien to the datu elite as they were threatening. Attempts by datu commentators to counter the IPP appeal in public speeches were often confused and occasionally counterproductive. The populism of Candao's IPP campaign—emphasizing justice for disadvantaged Muslims and "revolutionary" social change—echoed the Islamic messages advanced by the ulama in Friday sermons since early in the decade, as well as the public pronouncements of the MILE But Candao's populist appeal was not delimited by the ulama's program for Islamic renewal. In fact, IPP campaign rallies were often surprisingly pluralistic as well as popular events.

The plural and popular character of the IPP appeal was demonstrated in Governor Candao's final campaign rally. The rally for his opponent, Simeon Datumanong, took place in the central plaza, a location that remained associated with traditional, establishment politics. Candao held his rally on the waterfront at the main riverside pier in the Muslim quarter of the city. Candao sat in a chair on a hastily constructed wooden stage flanked by Ustadz Yahiya and Ustadz Pasigan, his former comrades on the MILF cease-fire committee and the cofounders, with him, of the IPP. Also seated on the podium were two members of the core Magindanaon nobility—one of them a radio commentator for Candao. At one point a young ustadz took the stage with a group of young female madrasah students dressed in Middle East-influenced gowns and head coverings and led them in a pledge to support to the death Candao and the IPP. They were followed shortly after by a young man and woman, both dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts, who sang popular American songs to entertain the crowd.

The sometimes glaring juxtapositions on the waterfront stage illustrate the complex composition of Candao's electoral appeal. Not only had Candao declined the use of the title "datu" for himself, he had stated (in an interview with me) in the heady early days of his ascension to office in 1986 that he saw "no place for traditional titles or leaders." Why then did he utilize datu commentators in his 1988 campaign, and why were traditional dignitaries seated with him on stage at the rally? While these Magindanaon aristocrats reminded voters of Candao's aristocratic bloodlines, that does not seem to have been the main purpose of their inclusion in his electoral campaign. As illustrated in the pointed radio exchanges of the campaign, the ideological battle lines between the datu coalition and the IPP were very sharply drawn, and Candao had little to gain by diluting his message merely to call attention to the noble blood that flowed in his veins. Candao's primary purpose in including traditional commentators was more likely a circuitously populist one. Authorities on taritib (aristocratic protocol) such as those who endorsed Candao were spokesmen for (and embodiments of) all of Magindanaon tradition, not just the formal observances of the high nobility but also the familiar rituals, beliefs, and practices embraced by ordinary Muslims. The presence of traditional cultural authorities (in the persons of the aristocratic dignitaries) thus balanced that of the ustadzes, those who had called for the elimination of many identity-affirming traditional practices. As part of his popular appeal to voters, Candao wanted to signal ordinary Muslims that a vote for him would not be a vote to abolish all of local tradition but only its autocratic and abusive elements.

Equally incongruous was the cultural disjunction between the Islamic intensity of the madrasah students and the pop music fervor of the T-shirted couple that followed them to the stage. The ulama had long before made clear their disapproval of young Muslim men and women performing together on stage and singing about erotic love. Even so, the two most prominent ustadzes in Cotabato (as well as the female madrasah students) were among the audience for this performance. Nor was this the first such entertainment at a public appearance by Zacaria Candao. On one previous occasion he and his audience were entertained by a "Muslim fashion show" in which young Muslim women demonstrated various ways to wear the malong, a long tube skirt. At another event, a modern, and very sensual, version of a "traditional" Muslim dance was performed by a young woman. These two entertainments, unlike the rather straightforward Western

entertainment at the waterfront rally, were forms of invented tradition. They presented generically "Muslim" versions of fashion shows and folk dance performances popular among Christian Filipinos. They were aspects of an ethnicized Philippine Muslim identity and tended to be organized and performed by members of the Westernizing Muslim elite, composed of the wealthiest and (usually) the most self-consciously aristocratic families. They were self-regarding artistic endeavors in a way that the dayunday—a genuinely popular entertainment—was not.

What all these artistic performances held in common was their potential for entertaining large Muslim audiences, and that clearly was the reason for their inclusion at mass political meetings even though the messages such entertainments sent seemed to contradict the teachings of the ulama. Zacaria Candao pragmatically included such entertainments (as another type of political resource) to draw large numbers of Muslim voters to his rallies and hold their attention. His need to provide Western (or Westernized) amusements in addition to Islamic presentations reveals something about the limited success of the Islamic renewal efforts of the ulama in the previous eight years.

The campaign message of Zacaria Candao and the Islamic Party of the Philippines was without precedent in Cotabato. Its proposal for a new politics based on ideal Islamic principles had broad appeal. One datu candidate in the provincial elections complained that he had lost even the votes of his relatives because of the attraction of the IPP. At the same time, the message presented in IPP electioneering differed from that offered by the ustadzes when they began to teach openly eight years earlier. The IPP appeal was less concerned with the purification of religious practice and the rejection of Western culture. Its radio messages utilized traditional as well as Islamic appeals, and its campaign rallies included traditional spokesmen and Western entertainments. This relaxation of some of the strictures of the Islamic renewal program represented a shift from a religious concern with Islamic purism to a political emphasis on Islamic-related populism. The IPP portrayed itself as the organization of the weak rather than the righteous, and it stressed Islamic entitlements rather than Islamic obligations. It offered a populist message—an inclusive and alternative Muslim nationalist appeal that emphasized ethical leadership and egalitarianism. That more eclectic message evidently appealed to Cotabato voters, who elected Zacaria Candao to the governor's office by a two-to-one margin.

Municipal Elections in Cotabato City: The Limits to Islamic Unity

The 1988 elections for municipal offices in Cotabato City differed notably in character and outcome from those held at the provincial level. For one, the city elections were held among an electorate fairly evenly divided between Muslims and Christians while the provincial electorate was overwhelmingly Muslim.^[13] Second, while the provincial elections were, for all practical purposes, quite narrowly focused on two principal candidates, two parties, and two opposed political ideologies, the city elections were remarkably unconfined in the number of variously affiliated candidates running for office. Twenty candidates ran for city mayor and 133 candidates competed for ten city council seats—an unprecedented array of contenders and parties reflecting a complete reopening of the political process after years of effective one-party rule under martial law.

Muslims comprised about half of those running for office: 8 of the 20 mayoral candidates, 6 of II vice-mayoral candidates, and somewhat less than 50 percent of the huge field of city council candidates. They represented an exceedingly wide range of political opinion and experience. Mayoral aspirants ranged from the former vice-mayor Angka Biruar—a member of the Muslim counterelite and an experienced politician—to Zamin Unti, one of the young Islamic activists in Campo Muslim, who was poor and unemployed, made his own campaign handbills, and ran on an independent Islamic platform. Between them were contenders such as Peping Candao, the brother of Governor Candao and the man who as a rebel defector protected the people of Campo Muslim from the army during the rebellion; and Bai Fatima Sinsuat, the head of the Progressive Labor Union, which controlled laborers on the main city pier.

The two leading Muslim candidates for mayor were Angka Biruar and Peping Candao. While both could count themselves among the Muslim counterelite, in their attributes and personal histories they differed markedly, both from one another and from Zacaria Candao, the consolidator of that counterelite. Angka Biruar embodied the indistinct boundaries between the old and new Muslim elite of Cotabato. He was a prominent member of the foremost family of the coastal smuggler elite. The Biruars had operated (and some said still ran) the most successful smuggling operation on the Cotabato coast. They had become quite wealthy from it—sufficiently wealthy to purchase from its

Christian owners a coconut plantation covering most of Bongo Island. They had also diversified into politics, sea transportation, and commercial fishing and had done well at all three. In addition, the Biruars were widely known for their concentrated efforts to purchase maratabat (status honor). Purchasing maratabat (in Magindanaon, pamasa sa maratabat ) entails offering large amounts of bridewealth in exchange for access through marriage to traditional status honor. The amount of bridewealth paid by their father to acquire aristocratic wives for Angka Biruar and his brothers was said by some to be single-handedly responsible for much of the bridewealth inflation that had occurred in Cotabato since the 1950s. In age and political inclination, Angka Biruar was closer to the generation of Zacaria Candao's father, Datu Liwa, than to Candao himself. Like Datu Liwa, he had previously served in city government as a city councilor and vice-mayor. The Biruar family had controlled the coastal municipality of Parang for twenty-five years. As an Iranun, a member of the smuggler elite, and a (low-profile) supporter of the Bangsamoro Rebellion, Angka Biruar qualified as a member of the Muslim counterelite. As a former government official and member of a wealthy and politically powerful family concerned with traditional status-honor, he also resembled the members of the datu elite. Biruar was quite popular among certain Muslim voters (mostly Iranun), but he campaigned in a traditional style and lacked the charisma and clearly articulated political message of Zacaria Candao.

Peping Candao would seem to have had a ready-made advantage in his mayoral bid because of his kin connection to the most popular political figure in the province. Also in his favor was his personal history as a protector of city Muslims during the rebellion. Working against him, however, was his ten-year absence from the city. Peping had left Cotabato City in 1977, shortly after the start of the cease-fire, to pursue a career in the Philippine Army. By 1988, he was in many ways a stranger to the Muslims of the city, even to the residents of Campo Muslim. He in fact received a surprisingly small number of votes from the urban community that had once viewed him as a savior.

Radio messages also played an important role in the city campaigns, but because of the great size of the field and the character of the electioneering, radio messages consisted almost exclusively of short paid advertisements rather than speeches or debates. The 1988 campaign period was notable for the tremendous number of jingles, slogans, and pronouncements in Magindanaon, Tagalog, and English asserting that

a particular candidate was the "representative," "voice," "friend," or "hope" of the "urban poor." As noted above, 1988 saw unparalleled attention paid to the urban poor electorate.^[14] As the great majority of poor people in the city were Muslims, many appeals were made directly to the Muslim urban poor by both Muslim and Christian candidates. One Muslim city council candidate hired a popular rebel singer to write and perform a song for him in Magindanaon that proclaimed in part: "Prepare yourselves because the savior of the people has arrived. It is none other than the son of Attorni Paki [referring to the father of the young candidate, a well-known former provincial officeholder] . . . He is here to help the poor of the city."

An especially enterprising Christian city council candidate established an organization of poor people, the Kilusang ng Urban Poor (Urban Poor Movement), as part of his campaign.^[15] He promised prospective members land and houses, the funding for which, he claimed publicly, would come from his "friends" abroad. He distributed membership cards for his organization in the public market neighborhood. The cards could be had for a one-peso fee to defray "office expenses." Poor city residents reportedly bought the membership cards as they would lottery tickets. The newfound concern by political candidates for the urban poor likely stemmed from two factors: the populist example set by Governor Candao since prior to his assumption of power in 1986, and the emergence in the previous few years of a number of genuine organizations of urban poor established by community organizers such as Kasan Kamid.

Despite its very impressive showing in the congressional and provincial elections, and the fact that IPP candidates captured a number of mayoral and other offices in municipalities throughout Maguindanao Province, the IPP was unexpectedly ineffective as a political force in the city polling. Their best showing was a third-place finish by their vice-mayoral candidate. None of the ten IPP candidates for the city council won seats, and only two placed among the top thirty finishers. Various factors may explain the IPP's poor performance in the city election. One very likely reason was that, unlike virtually every other participating political party, the IPP failed to field a mayoral candidate. As a consequence, the party was unable to present a complete slate to voters, and IPP city council candidates lacked a central popular figure with whom they could associate themselves. The IPP did not officially endorse a candidate for mayor because no name was offered that the IPP nomination panel could agree upon. Peping Candao presented the

most probable choice, but he chose to run as an independent candidate for mayor as part of a slate that included Muslim and Christian candidates. IPP representatives explained that he did so for fear of alienating potential Christian votes by his identification with an "Islamic" party. At least two other widely known political figures and supporters of Zacaria Candao—individuals who would also have been probable IPP candidates—chose, apparently for the same reason, not to run as official candidates of the IPP. The IPP was left with candidates most of whom were neither widely known nor politically experienced. On the whole, they exhibited no special "Islamic" characteristics, though almost all were members of counterelite families. Two of the IPP's city council candidates lived in Campo Muslim. One was a fish wholesaler and the other a provincial livestock inspector.

A second, more general cause for the lack of success of the IPP in city elections—one glimpsed already in the political calculations of Peping Candao—was the problem of divided loyalties and conflicting interests among Muslim candidates in the city. Knowledgeable political observers in the city—both Muslims and Christians—agreed before election day that Muslims had a unique opportunity to recapture the mayor's office for the first time since 1967 and to win a significant share of city council seats as well. This assessment was based on an assumption and a surmise. Observers shared the assumption that Muslim voters would vote for Muslim candidates. One zealous IPP campaign worker went farther and informed me that it was "compulsory" for Muslims to vote for the IPP or, at the very least, for Muslim candidates, noting that it was their "religious obligation." Most observers, however, simply expected that, because of personal ties, Muslim nationalist ideals, or ethnoreligious affinities, Muslims would choose to elect Muslims to city office. The surmise stemmed from the fact that the city electorate was fairly evenly divided between Muslims and Christians. It held that, because there were four strong Christian candidates for mayor and only two dominant Muslim candidates, the leading Muslim candidate, Angka Biruar, had a strong chance of winning if, as expected and rumored, the other Muslim candidates would "throw their votes" to him at some point before election day.

Contrary to expectations, Muslims not only failed to regain the mayor's office but did quite poorly in the city council race as well. In that contest, the top ten vote-getters gained city council seats. The only Muslim to be elected—an incumbent who ran and won in 1980—re-

ceived the least number of votes of the winning candidates. Neither of the suppositions of political observers proved true. For one, Muslim candidates did not unite at the last moment to consolidate candidacies and outpoll divided Christian opponents. The only point at which Muslim mayoral candidates united to any extent was after the election, to protest their loss and accuse the winning Christian candidate of massive cheating.^[16] The city election campaign engendered not unity but predictable divisiveness among contending Muslim candidates and their supporters. That disunity extended to the ranks of the ulama. During the campaign, a meeting was called at the Mahad in Campo Muslim to decide which of the mayoral candidates should be supported. It was attended by ustadzes, imams, elders, community leaders, and supporters of the IPP. Those in attendance were divided in their allegiances to various candidates, and a consensus was never reached. The fact that the ustadzes were not unified in their political choices was widely known and commented upon in Campo Muslim. When it was announced at a seminar held for imams that Ustadz Pasigan, the founder of the Mahad, favored the candidacy of Peping Candao for mayor, the assembled imams paid little heed because it was common knowledge that the founder's second in command, Ustadz Ali Abdul Ajiz Naga, supported Angka Biruar.

That the city elections prompted competition rather than cooperation among Muslim politicians and their elite supporters is not a surprising fact. Nevertheless, the very poor showing of Muslim candidates on the whole during a period when Muslim political awareness in Cotabato seemed to be peaking was rather astonishing. As illustration, in the race for mayor, Christian mayoral candidates gained over 71 percent of the vote although Christians comprised only about 52 percent of the city electorate. Voter turnout was relatively low, with less than 59 percent of registered voters casting their ballots; and it is not likely that Muslim turnout was much more than 10 percent below that of Christians.^[17] This suggests that at least some Muslims contradicted the assumptions of Muslim and Christian political observers and voted for Christian candidates. Vote tallies obtained from six Muslim precincts appear to confirm that suspicion. Some Muslim politicians took the fact that Christian politicians received votes in Muslim precincts as prima facie evidence for ballot box tampering on the part of certain Christian politicians. My evidence suggests, to the contrary, that these were genuine votes. To understand this voting behavior it is

necessary to observe the city elections from the perspective of poor Muslims, focusing particularly on the economics of vote-buying and-selling.

Local Elections and the Muslim Urban Poor

For the poor Muslims of Cotabato City, many of whom could rarely afford the six-peso (thirty-cent) price of admission to a movie theater, the 1988 elections were a marvelous source of free entertainment. The unusually large field of candidates ensured that during the six-week campaign period, marches and rallies by various candidates and parties were held almost daily. Many, if not most of the rallies included dayunday performances. In the four weeks I spent in Campo Muslim prior to the election, three campaign rallies took place there, all with dayundays—the same number of public performances that might otherwise be held in a six- to eight-month period in the community. Audiences at the Campo Muslim rallies shouted for the dayunday to begin when they determined that the speeches of the candidates (all Muslims) had continued for too long. For their part, Christian candidates in advertising their campaign rallies, routinely announced the inclusion of dayunday performances "for our Muslim brothers." In addition to (or in lieu of) dayundays there were often other forms of entertainment, usually one or more singers performing popular tunes. The candidates themselves would sometimes sing as well after some playful badgering from the audience. The rallies and their associated parades, as well as the special nightly radio programs related above and the general air of excitement associated with political campaigning, combined to create a rare festive atmosphere for the city's poor.

Election campaigns generated more than just free entertainment. They were also a potential source of material resources, especially for those who actively sought them—usually younger males. Resources gained directly or indirectly from candidates took various forms. The most rudimentary sorts of benefits were those obtained by youngsters—usually young men—who marched (or sometimes rode) in the parades around the city held by various candidates. After watching one of these cavalcades pass by, with pedicabs and jeeps filled with riders and more than two hundred young people marching, I asked a friend who was with me how the candidate—who was not very widely known—acquired so many young supporters. He replied that bata -

bata (youngsters or young followers) such as those in the parade were easily obtained: "It is easy to find young unmarried men [mga binata ] to join a campaign caravan. They are standbys [unemployed or underemployed school leavers]—they have nothing to do. They enjoy riding around the city in a truck and are happy to parade in exchange for meryenda [a snack]." He also noted that the young men marching in that particular parade were probably organized by their friends and also paid a small amount of cash each from "gas money" given to the organizers by the candidate.

More substantial material benefits were also available from candidates. These were sometimes directly solicited from candidates by individuals who might offer just their own vote—often euphemized as "assistance" (tabang )—but more commonly also the votes of others they claimed to represent. Two entries from my field notes illustrate this sort of solicitation. The first entry records the words of Zamin Unti, the Islamic activist from Campo Muslim who ran for mayor:

A kapatas [labor foreman] offered me more than two hundred votes. He said, "I and my men will vote for you if you give us electricity." He knew that I did electrical work and he wanted me to provide the electricity first, before the election. A karate teacher with many students also came to me with a problem. He had a relative who needed an operation. He offered votes in return for my assistance. He did not ask me for money. He knew that I had worked with Zacaria Candao. He wanted a letter of introduction to Candao. He felt that Candao was the one person who could help him. I accepted neither of these offers.

The second excerpt concerns a story told to me by a Campo Muslim resident about the endeavors of some young men in Kalanganan, the rural area to the west of Campo Muslim:

The elders in Bokhana [a purok , or small community, in Kalanganan] had decided to support Angka Biruar for mayor. Some young men from Bokhana went to Angka Biruar to "assist" him. The candidate said he had already given money to their purok leader [a member of the barangay council who represents a purok] and they should see him to obtain the money. The money was never forthcoming from the purok leader so they went to other candidates to offer their votes. They received money from a Christian candidate and voted for him because he had paid them, but also to defy their purok leader. When the purok leader, embarrassed to find that votes had been cast for a Christian candidate in his precinct, confronted the young men, they cited him a proverb: "If the hen obtains food but keeps it all to herself, her chicks will find food elsewhere."

Both excerpts point to the fairly common phenomenon of small-scale, freelance liders, or vote brokers.^[18] These individuals approach various candidates claiming to have followers of some sort and offering votes in return for favors, not always in the form of money. Some very small-time liders taken on by a candidate will work for cigarettes, meryenda, and the promise of a job if the candidate wins.

Most transactions involving the exchange of votes for material benefits do not, however, occur as the result of freelance approaches from below. The greatest amount of vote buying and selling takes place within multilayered social networks that may long predate the campaign period. Such networks are important primarily as a means to assure that money channeled from the candidate will have the greatest likelihood of returning votes in his or her favor. Because voting is conducted secretly, this may be accomplished only indirectly, through personal ties and the desire of individuals to protect their reputations. Nur Miskin was the informal leader of a number of young men in Campo Muslim. He told me that he had been approached by two Muslim liders—both of them working for Christian candidates—and been offered money to provide votes. He expressed his view of the ethics and etiquette of vote-selling: "It is better not to accept money in exchange for votes, but if you take the money you should, as a Muslim, vote for the candidate whose money you were given . . . If I had taken money from [a certain lider] I would have told my followers to vote and at least have voted for his candidate myself because my reputation could be destroyed if the candidate received no votes in my precinct. His [the lider's] reputation would not be destroyed, but mine would. That is, of course, only if the candidate himself had met me or knew who I was."

Approaches to those with direct access to votes were usually made by the principal lider of a particular candidate. Targeted individuals—who would become subliders if they accepted the offer—tended to be those who possessed both influence and a good reputation in a particular community. Ideally, but by no means always, they also had some preexisting personal connection to the lider. Several such approaches were made to prominent community figures in Campo Muslim. The Muslim lider of a Christian mayoral candidate offered a popular purok leader in Campo Muslim one thousand pesos for his initial support and ten pesos for every vote he was able to recruit at fifty pesos apiece.^[19] Nur Miskin was offered a significant amount of money by the Muslim lider of another Christian candidate for mayor in exchange

for "gathering his men" and displaying them to the candidate.^[20] Even the municipal chairman of the MILF shadow government was rumored to be operating as a lider for a Christian mayoral candidate and distributing one hundred-peso notes to Campo Muslim residents connected with the shadow government as a token of the candidate's "sincerity."^[21]

Vote-buying networks could nevertheless malfunction in a number of ways, most likely at their lowest levels. As evidenced in the story from Kalanganan, money intended to purchase votes may never be distributed by subliders overconfident of their ability to recruit sufficient votes without direct payments.^[22] On the other hand, money was occasionally distributed by subliders to voters without any clear instructions given for voting. That sort of breakdown was to be expected under circumstances such as those found in the 1988 elections, where a great many candidates were seeking to obtain votes with money, and vote-buying networks were 'hurriedly constructed and often weakly connected. I witnessed an example of this sort of vote-buying malfunction in Campo Muslim. One evening shortly before the election, Kasan Kamid was requested by the wife of a local purok leader to gather his relatives and followers from his neighborhood for a distribution of free rice given by a candidate. The woman was a sublider and had been given a fifty-kilo sack of rice to be distributed to registered voters. She informed Kasan because she was aware that he knew many people. The lider who recruited her and provided her the rice, was a Muslim middle-level government employee living in Campo Muslim. He worked for a Christian candidate and may have been a sublider himself. Kasan quickly relayed news of the distribution to his relatives and neighbors who hurried to the distribution site with plastic bags. Fifty one-kilo bags of rice were soon disbursed, with the name of each recipient relayed by Kasan and carefully recorded by the sublider. At no time during the distribution were recipients told whom to vote for or even informed which candidate had provided the rice. The list of recipients merely documented that the rice had actually been distributed; the list was delivered to the Campo Muslim lider immediately after the giveaway was completed. Some recipients approached Kasan the following day to ask which candidate had donated the rice. He told them that they were free to vote for whomever they wished.

The most efficient vote-buying networks were those that were well integrated from top to bottom. One such network conducted part of

its operations in Campo Muslim. It existed to support the Christian candidate who eventually won the mayorship. The primary lider in the network was a prominent and well-regarded Muslim businessman in the city. This lider had a secondary lider—his first cousin—who was also well-respected, with numerous ties to Campo Muslim. The secondary lider contacted an individual in Campo Muslim to act as a community-level lider. This tertiary lider had, until recently, been underground as a Muslim separatist insurgent. He possessed a number of followers in the community and elsewhere and a wide reputation based on stories of his exploits as a rebel fighter. The three liders were also tied together by utang na loob , or debts of gratitude (literally, debts of the inner self). The two subliders had fought together in the armed rebellion. The primary lider had provided support to both of these men for some time. He had supplied them with guns and money while they were fighting, and had arranged to have his cousin, the secondary lider, freed from prison after the cousin had served two years of a much longer murder sentence. The Campo Muslim lider had been working to organize his followers since his return from "inside" in late 1986. On election day he stationed himself at the polling place used by most of his followers and quietly paid them after they had voted. The vote-buying network to which he belonged incorporated all of the features required by a candidate seeking to convert material resources into votes; its members were distinguished by their mutual trust, their competence, and their confidentiality.

Table 2 shows the votes gained by each of the eight mayoral candidates who garnered the most votes in the six precincts at the polling place used by most Campo Muslim voters. Checks of voter registration lists indicated that these precincts were used almost exclusively by Muslims. The table is incomplete in that it neither lists all the precincts used by Campo Muslim voters nor all the mayoral candidates. It does, however, give a general indication of the extent to which Christian candidates were able to capture the votes of poor Muslims. Candidates are listed only by ethnoreligious affiliation. Three Christians finished among the top eight candidates, garnering more than 19 percent of the votes cast for the leading vote-getters.^[23] In one of the precincts (number 4) they received almost 30 percent of the votes cast for the leading candidates. All three of the top-finishing Christian candidates had liders operating in Campo Muslim. It should be noted that none of the precincts listed in table 2 were located at the polling place targeted by the efficient Campo Muslim lider described above. For various rea-

sons, Campo Muslim residents who migrated to the community from rural areas within the city limits tend to register at their places of birth. As most of the followers of this lider hailed from Kalanganan, he stationed himself at that polling place on election day. There is reason to believe, therefore, that the percentage of votes garnered by Christian candidates from Campo Muslim residents at the Kalanganan polling place (which also had multiple precincts) was just as great, if not greater than that recorded for the precincts in table 2.

Qualitative data, gathered mostly in Campo Muslim, indicate that vote-buying conducted on behalf of candidates in poor Muslim communities was fairly widespread. They also indicate that Christian candidates relied more heavily on vote-buying to capture Muslim votes than did their Muslim counterparts. Most of the Muslim candidates for city office had far smaller resource bases for campaign expenditures than did the leading Christian candidates. It is also likely that, as with so many other observers of the political scene in the city, Muslim candidates assumed that Muslims would not vote for non-Muslim candidates and so spent too few resources to counter that possibility. In the absence of the clearly defined issues and charismatic candidate found in the provincial race, some of the Muslim urban poor ignored the vague promises and ethnic presumptions of Muslim candidates and responded to concrete offers for their votes, whatever their source.

Very often, the proximate sources of those offers were other, well-respected Muslims, most of them not so poor, who had, for their own reasons, decided that they preferred individual economic or political gain to whatever shared political benefits might accrue to them from a Muslim political reascension in Cotabato City.

Conclusion

As the post-Marcos era opened, the two mass rallies in the Cotabato City plaza demonstrated the promise of a popular-based Muslim nationalism led by a newly ascendant counterelite under the Islamic guidance of an independent and politically active ulama. Ordinary Muslims (and especially poor urban Muslims) were readily mobilized for collective action in support of Muslim autonomy—action that did not, to be sure, involve significant costs for ordinary participants. The MILF "prayer rally," in particular, demonstrated the considerable political influence and organizational abilities of the ulama acting on behalf of the MILF, notwithstanding the failure of the organizers to achieve their stated goals.

The gubernatorial election marked a watershed in Cotabato electoral politics. The winning candidate, Zacaria Candao, received virtually no local support from traditional elites and very little effective assistance from a national party but nevertheless defeated his datu opponent handily. An important factor in his success was the novel form of the electoral campaign itself—a structure, based on extended direct appeals to ordinary voters, that Candao had earlier cultivated and now used to his advantage in the more hospitable post-Marcos environment. The radio campaigning in the governor's race amounted to an extended broadcast debate between the two candidates over ideological as well as practical and personal issues. Almost everyone in Campo Muslim (as well as most of the Muslims in the province) has access to a radio, and the nightly arguments in that debate were followed carefully by many Campo Muslim residents. For quite possibly the first time in the history of electoral politics in Muslim Cotabato, direct ideological appeals (featuring Islam as a political language) reached mass audiences and became key considerations in the electoral choices of a great number of Cotabato Muslims.

Of equal significance was the design and content of the IPP appeal itself. The contest between the IPP and the datu coalition in the election for governor was on one level an ideological struggle, unparalleled

in Cotabato, between those who endorsed the proposition that Islam is all-inclusive and cannot be separated from politics and those who believed that religion, including Islam, should be relegated to a private domain. However, as witnessed in Candao's final campaign rally, two key elements of the Islamic renewal program of the ulama (and high MILF leadership)—doctrinal purification and the rejection of Western cultural influence—did not receive emphasis in the IPP's electoral appeal. The Islamic message of the IPP was much more populist than puritan. With the need to win the hearts of ordinary voters firmly in mind, the electoral appeal of Candao and the IPP took careful consideration of the prior responses of ordinary Muslims to the ulama's program for Islamic renewal. The IPP message reflected a praxis based on years of implicit negotiations. It emerged out of the everyday interplay between incremental pressures for religious reform and small but significant resistances, and was as much the result of the pragmatic dissidence of non-elite Muslims as of the moral authority of the ulama.

The IPP campaign utilized aspects of traditional culture because much of that culture was identity-affirming for Muslim voters. It allowed Western (or Westernized) amusements because, although most Muslim voters favored political independence from Western rule as represented by the Philippine state, they appreciated many aspects of Western culture and did not endorse its wholesale rejection. Islamic populism was underscored in the IPP appeal because it coincided with the Islamic consciousness of the poor Muslims who comprised most of the Muslim electorate.

While the mass rallies and provincial elections demonstrated the promise of popular Muslim nationalism, the city elections revealed its limitations. The pragmatically modified IPP message of Islamic populism and separatism that proved so effective in the provincial elections was overcome in the municipal elections by more narrowly defined political and economic interests. The "Islamic unity" advocated by the IPP was nowhere evidenced in that election. Competitive Muslim candidates, concerned not to alienate city Christians, shunned the IPP precisely because of its Islamic appellation.^[24] Members of the aboveground ulama, and even underground MILF operatives, actively supported separate candidates on the basis of kin or other particularistic loyalties. For their part, poor urban Muslims, in the absence of substantive campaign messages or charismatic candidates, approached the city elections primarily as an occasion to enjoy the various favors offered to attract the suddenly prized political resources they possessed.

That a good number of Campo Muslim residents provided their votes to Christian candidates in exchange for material gratuities suggests only that many poor Muslims were no less astute at obtaining particular benefits from collective political processes than were the Muslim vote-brokers and politicians with whom they transacted.