Lawmaker eyes new Mindanao agency

COTABATO CITY – North Cotabato Rep. Bernardo Piñol, Jr. will file a bill seeking the creation of a quasi-judicial agency to settle land disputes peacefully among Muslim and Christian residents in Mindanao.

The agency that Piñol proposes will be named Mindanao Land Conflict Settlement Commission (MLCSC) and will resolve land conflicts and address the allegations of forcible undue dispossession of Moro communities of lands due to ignorance of how to apply for titles.

Pinol, a younger brother of North Cotabato Vice Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, said he will file the bill in support of an earlier resolution by their provincial board, which called for the creation of such outfit, as a remedy to long-time land disputes involving Moro and non-Moro residents in Mindanao.

“The issue of land conflict has been peddled through the years as the main reason for the discontent of the Muslims in the South. Let us address this problem once and for all,” he said.

Piñol said that while there are really cases of forced takeover of land especially at the height of the Mindanao conflict in the 1970s, the claims of Muslim rebels of “land grabbing” by Christians been excessively exaggerated.

“The propaganda was meant to fan the anger of Muslims against government,” Piñol said.

Vice Gov. Piñol said by creating a body that will address these allegations by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front of land grabbing by Christians, the government can put an end to the use by the MILF of such issue to justify atrocities perpetrated by its rouge members trying to claim titled lands as property of their ancestors and, are, thus, owned by them too.

“It is time to separate the grain from chaff,” Vice Gov. Pinol said. He also emphasized that the body would really be able to give justice to those who were truly dispossessed of their land through force. – John Unson