Magdalo Rep. Ashley Acedillo Photo from Facebook account
COTABATO CITY—Muslim leaders and professionals have reacted to remarks attributed to Magdalo party-list Rep. Francisco Ashley Acedillo disparaging the country’s Muslim minority.
According to lawyer and peace campaigner Amirah Pendatun, the Muslims in the House gallery during the interpellation on the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law on Thursday heard Acedillo say that the passage of the BBL was “wishful thinking because a Bangsamoro government would be fragile owing to the low capability of the Moro people.”
Michael Mastura, a former Maguindanao congressman, said the party-list representative probably did not know that he, a Muslim, was the author of the Party-List Law, the basis for Acedillo’s occupying one of the reserved seats in Congress. Mastura also authored the Philippine Passport Act.
The aggrieved Muslims made these remarks during the installation on Thursday of Alexander Guro Alonto Jr. as agriculture secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
They said the Muslims also thrived as a nation in the past with a complete form of government ruled by sultans and datus.
Vice Gov. Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman of the ARMM said the region had the best Muslim professionals in terms of leadership capabilities and academic records.
Lucman said ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman was in fact inspired by “the Moro Muslims before us who had contributed some of the best instruments of reform in the country’s democratic history.
These included, he said, the authorship by the late senator Ahmad Domocao Alonto in 1958 of the New Civil Code, which refers to Philippine inhabitants as Filipinos, instead of Christians and non-Christian tribes, Mohammedans and pagan tribes, as they were referred to in the old code.
Sammy Maulana, the chair of the ARMM Regional Reconciliation and Unification Commission, said Acedillo must surely have benefited from the work of other Muslims like the late Sulu Sen. Hadji Buto Abdul Bagui, who introduced during the Commonwealth Senate the first bill for the establishment of the Philippine Military Academy in 1929.
Reached for comment, Acedillo vehemently denied saying the things he was supposedly quoted as having said.
“That’s inflammatory. Why would I say that within full hearing of my colleagues? It seems there’s an effort to inflame emotions and passions, and we don’t want that,” he said.
Acedillo said he never made a comment about the “low capability” of any people, or words to that effect, although he did talk about “wishful thinking” that the BBL would resolve existing problems in the ARMM.
He decried what he called a sinister move to “stigmatize” lawmakers opposed to the BBL, whose passage had been hampered by quorum troubles in the House and resistance from congressmen in the aftermath of the Jan. 25 Mamasapano massacre. With a report from DJ Yap