Stakeholders pledge support for new BARMM health chief

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Stakeholders also gave the new health minister of the Bangsamoro region, a lawyer, a vote of confidence after his physician-ophthalmologist predecessor did so and assured support for his leadership in the ministry entrusted to him.

The lawyer Jay Datumanong Salliman, representative of Basilan to the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament, took oath as minister of the Ministry of Health-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao on Friday, November 6, in a symbolic rite officiated by BARMM Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua.

Salliman replaced the eye surgeon Kadil Sinolindin Jr., whose tenure, both as an appointed interim parliament member and as a health minister, ended on October 30, the day elected regional lawmakers held their inaugural session, after a brief meeting with President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., at the BARMM government center in Cotabato City.  

Up to 51 of the 80 duly elected members of the now regular BARMM parliament then nominated Macacua, an elected representative of a parliamentary district covering adjoining barangays in Cotabato City and Maguindanao del Norte province, as BARMM chief minister.  

Sinolinding told reporters on Sunday that he and his fellow health workers in the Deseret Surgimed Hospital in Kabacan town in Cotabato that he is helping manage, serving residents of the Bangsamoro Special Geographic Area in the province, will help push forward the MoH-BARMM’s health programs under Salliman’s ministerial watch.

Some cynics, among them candidates who lost in their bids for seats in the parliament during the September 14 regional electoral exercise, had questioned Macacua's appointment of a lawyer as regional health minister, something that Sinolinding and other physicians in medical outfits in the region dismissed as virtually illogical and unfounded.

“The work of a minister of any ministry in BARMM is ministerial. You are there only to ensure that the ministry functions well. Under you are experts who are to implement its programs and activities under your guidance, for all of it to be implemented well. I have extended my greeting to him (Salliman) for his having become regional health minister,” Sinolinding said.

The physician Ibrahim Pangato, chief of the Cotabato Sanitarium and General Hospital in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte, said on Sunday that he and his subordinate-physicians have no question over Salliman’s being health minister based on an appointment by Macacua, now figurehead of the duly-mandated 80-member BARMM parliament.

“We shall be glad if he can visit us in our hospital, whose workforce shall support his programs as regional health minister,” Pangato said.

The physician Mohammad Ariff Baguindali, chief of the Bangsamoro Regional and Medical Center in Datu Hoffer, Maguindanao del Sur, said he and his subordinates do not have an issue over Macacua having appointed a lawyer as BARMM health minister.

“His work is ministerial and, as a lawyer, he is competent enough to do so,” Baguindali said.

Datu Oping Ampatuan, vice mayor of Shariff Aguak, one of the 22 towns in Maguindanao del Sur, said on Sunday that he is planning to sponsor a resolution, as presiding chairperson of their municipal council, manifesting support for Salliman’s being minister of MoH-BARMM.

“We don’t see any issue about his having become regional health minister, appointed to the post based on trust and confidence in him by our regional chief minister,” Ampatuan said.

Maguindanao del Norte Vice Gov. Marshall Sinsuat and his spouse, Mayor Raida Tomawis-Sinsuat of Datu Blah Sinsuat, had separately told reporters that they will continue providing with administrative and manpower support for all activities in their seaside hometown, Datu Blah Sinsuat in Maguindanao del Sur, of the MoH-BARMM, now under Salliman’s ministerial control.