LP solon draws flak for saying IPs ‘stinky’

CATAMCO berating a lumad leader during a dialogue in the presence of militant legislators and military officials at a dialogue over the lumad’s fear of returning to their homes because of military presence. KARLOS MANLUPIG/INQUIRER MINDANAO

DAVAO CITY—North Cotabato Rep. Nancy Catamco, chair of the House committee on cultural minorities, drew flak from various groups here for allegedly insulting tribal people during a dialogue with members of a tribe who fled fighting between communist rebels and government soldiers.

The dialogue was initially attended by Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate and Gabriela Rep. Luz Ilagan and other government and military officials.

It was aimed at addressing the lumad evacuees’ call for a pullout of soldiers from the tribal community.

During the dialogue, Catamco, a member of the ruling Liberal Party, said the evacuation site stank and the children probably have not taken a bath.

She also questioned the legitimacy of lumad leaders.

“She was so arrogant,” one of the lumad leaders said.

“She said our children have become stinky. She only came to insult us and our children,” said Datu Kailo Buntolan, one of the lumad leaders.

“She also said we are not lumad leaders. It was like she came here to us, to insult our children, to tell us that we are not real leaders,” said Buntolan.

Buntolan said Catamco called also the lumad leaders “inefficient” because they could not persuade their people, numbering about 700, to return home.

“But why would we persuade them to go home if this is the safest place for them now?” he said.

Catamco, said Buntolan, had become the mouthpiece of the military, which had been insisting that the tribal people return to their homes.

“There was no assurance that the military, which has been abusing our people, will be made to leave and she wants us home?” Buntolan said, adding that it was if Catamco wants to expose them to further abuse.

Datu Jimboy Mandagit, another lumad leader, said the tribe’s experience with Catamco was painful.

Reacting to the allegations, Catamco said she had been misunderstood.

She said she was carried away during the dialogue because it was painful for her to see the condition of the lumad children in the ill-equipped Haran Evacuation Center, which is being run by the United Church of Christ of the Philippines.

“Even if they were IPs (indigenous peoples), they did not want this,” Catamco said.

She said she did not insult anyone because when she said stinky, she was referring to the evacuation center.

“I never said any derogatory statement against them,” she added.

Catamco also said she had suspected that the evacuation was staged and that the lumad in the evacuation center were being used by militants to support a bid to remove soldiers from Talaingod and other areas.

She said she was challenging Zarate and Ilagan to let the evacuees return home or at least turn them over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) “if they are really evacuees.”

Catamco claimed the lumad at Haran were now akin to prisoners because they were being padlocked inside the facility.

“They can call me arrogant or anything if they want, for all I care. Mine is that they have to let the IPs go home or turn over them to the DSWD so they could get real help,” Catamco said.

But UCCP Bishop Hamuel Tequis denied Catamco’s claim, saying Haran was “purposely created to accommodate individuals or communities that were deprived, neglected, exploited, harassed, and suppressed.”

Tequis said the lumad had taken refuge “in our Church and UCCP will always provide sanctuary to those who are suppressed and deprived of their dignity as a human being.”

Catamco, representing North Cotabato’s second district in the House of Representatives, was closely identified with Aaron Foundation Philippines Inc., a nongovernment organization that would later figure in the fertilizer scam that rocked the administration of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo following the 2004 presidential election.

“She’s the point person of Aaron Foundation Inc., which I know she owned,” former North Cotabato Rep. Bernardo Piñol Jr. said.

Catamco had denied any direct link with Aaron, saying her association with the foundation, if any, was that the NGO being a client of Perzebros, a foliar fertilizer distribution company that she and her former husband owned. Allan Nawal and Carlo Agamon, Inquirer Mindanao