Thousands rally for detained Maguindanao del Sur mayor

COTABATO CITY — Around 3,000 villagers, including ethnic Tedurays, gathered in the highland South Upi town in Maguindanao del Sur on Thursday, May 22, to express support for their detained mayor, implicated in last year’s fatal ambush of his constituent vice mayor.

Rally organizers at Timanan in South Upi told reporters they believe Mayor Reynalbert Insular and his wife Janet were wrongly charged in the Aug. 2, 2024 ambush that killed Vice Mayor Roldan Benito and his Teduray aide, Weng Marcos. Insular is now serving his third term.

Benito and Marcos were ambushed and killed instantly by gunmen while traveling by pick-up truck from Timanan to Barangay Pandan in South Upi. The attack also left Benito’s wife, Analyn, and a student, Joseph Mutia, wounded.

Brig. Gen. Romeo Juan Macapaz, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters on Friday, May 23, that Insular and his wife voluntarily surrendered to officials of PRO-BAR and the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group on Tuesday, May, 20, after learning that the Regional Trial Court Branch 27 in Cotabato City, had issued warrants for their arrest.

Macapaz said the Insulars are now under the custody of the CIDG-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, awaiting litigation for the criminal cases filed against them.

Teduray and non-Teduray settlers in South Upi strongly believe that the murder, attempted murder, and frustrated murder charges against Insular and his wife lack sufficient evidence.

“The family of our mayor is very close to the family of our slain vice mayor,” a Teduray farmer, Moh Armin Kedew, told reporters.

The slain Benito was known for his popular campaign against heavily-armed outsiders, non-Tedurays intruding, grabbing the lands of tribespeople in ancestral domains in South Upi.   

Many residents of South Upi are convinced that it was for this that he was killed in an ambush last year by men armed with assault rifles, who fled before responding volunteer community watchmen and barangay officials in Pandan arrived.