Who’s afraid of Tingting Cojuangco?

COTABATO CITY, Philippines—Margarita “Tingting” Cojuangco, President Benigno Aquino’s aunt, recalled to reporters that in 1983, she had been warned by her academic peers and professors at the University of Santo Tomas against going to Mindanao to research on Muslim culture and history for her master’s thesis.

Contrary to their expectations, the socialite said she was warmly accepted by her hosts among the Tausug political leaders, particularly the Sakaluran family, which is engaged in the water transport business. The family even allowed her to use one of their boats to go around the Sulu archipelago.

“We slept on cots, those you’d normally use when you are on board (a ship), and we followed the stars in navigating. Oh! What a star glittering in hope over Muslim Mindanao!” Cojuangco told supporters at Estosan Garden Hotel in Cotabato City.

On May 22, Cojuangco, accompanied by her husband, former Tarlac Rep. Jose Cojuangco Jr., filed her certificate of candidacy for vice governor in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections.

Rich Muslim history

She challenged young Muslims to invest time and effort in further studying their culture and history. “Your place is very rich in history,” she said in Filipino.

Earlier that day, her gubernatorial running mate, former Sultan Kudarat Gov. Pax Mangudadatu, filed his own certificate of candidacy in a long convoy of vehicles carrying his supporters and political allies, all the way from Isulan town in Sultan Kudarat.

Cojuangco took reporters by surprise when she appeared at the restaurant straight from the airport after a flight from Manila and declared that she is running for vice governor.

“What has she done for the ARMM when she is from Tarlac?” the reporters asked.

Cory’s vision

Her husband and the President’s uncle answered: “I and (then President) Cory (Aquino) started all this when we envisioned the ARMM to be a peaceful, development area for the Muslims.”

He considered his wife’s political aspiration “another opportunity” to realize that vision. They are both against a usual political intervention by Malacañang in the ARMM, he said.

During the first ARMM election campaign period and in many regional political events from the late 1980s to the early 1990s during the administration of then Gov. Zacaria Candao, Cojuangco was conspicuously present. She has not sold her house in Awang town in Maguindanao and has established residency there since the Candao administration.

It had been rumored then that she was doing another academic paper—this time, for the National Defense College’s (NDC) graduate program leading to a Master of Arts degree in National Security Administration (MNSA).

Cojuangco’s political ties with the Sakalurans of Sulu have led to a friendship with the family of Pax Mangudadatu, whose daughter is married to now Sultan Kudarat Rep. Raden Sakaluran.

‘Political mockery’

Zamzamin Ampatuan, former chair of the National Anti-Poverty Commission, said Cojuangco’s candidacy might be seen even by nonresidents of the region as the “political mockery” of the ARMM.

Maguindanao Rep. Simeon Datumanong, a political ally and fraternity brother of Mangudadatu, described Cojuangco as “good as a person and as a friend.” But he said that if Malacañang had fielded candidates for the top regional posts in case the August elections would push through, certainly it would not be Cojuangco—unless the President would ignore public criticism.

Besides, Datumanong said, both Mangudadatu and Cojuangco come from Maguindanao. Traditionally, he explained, a tandem should be representing at least two provinces in a regional election.

Debates have raged among ARMM political pundits as to which came first—Cojuangco’s NDC security thesis on Muslim Mindanao or the 1988 passage of the Organic Act (Republic Act No. 6734), which created the ARMM?

Some say her MNSA thesis became one of government’s principal references in crafting the autonomous region, which dates back to the framing of the 1987 Constitution in 1986.

Cojuangco herself did not mention anything about the security paper in her speech and answers to reporters’ queries. But a person close to her said the academic paper “came into experimental play during the (ARMM) administration of Candao.”