DAVAO CITY: Their leaders  may be detained outside Maguindanao but they remain a clan to reckon with in the southern province, if we are to base it on the number of candidates running for election or re-election on May 10. The Ampatuans, Sinsuats, Sangkis, Mangudadatus, Pendatuns, Masturas, Midtimbangs etc.. are fielding candidates for the May 10 polls but the Ampatuans have the highest number at 68, 50 of them carrying the same surname while the remaining 18 use Ampatuan as their middle name.

Of the 50, at least 23 are members of the immediate family of the patriarch, Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr. The Mangudadatus have 15, 10 of them bearing the surname, with the remaining five using Mangudadatu as their middle name.

On November 23 last year, the Mangudadatus sent a convoy of relatives, woman lawyers and 32 journalists to the provincial office of the Commission on Elections in Shariff Aguak town, Maguindanao, to file the certificate of candidacy for governor of Vice Mayor Esmael Gaguil Mangudadatu of Buluan town.

The convoy was stopped by armed men believed led by Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. who would have been the Ampatuans’ candidate for governor and along with six others who happened to pass the highway at the wrong time, were herded into Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman in Ampatuan town, where they were massacred—at least 58 of them—35 of them buried in three mass gravesites.

Andal Jr. was taken into custody by authorities on November 26.

On December 5, hours after martial law was declared over portions of Maguindanao, Andal Sr., then OIC Governor of Maguindanao, was taken into custody at 1:30 in the morning while his son Datu Zaldy, governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), was arrested around 7 a.m. and brought to General Santos City. Two other sons, Datu Anwar, mayor of Shariff Aguak, and Datu Sajid, former OIC Governor of Maguindanao, were also taken into custody along with son-in-law Datu Akmad “Tato” Ampatuan Sr. and brought to the 6th Infantry Division in Awang, Datu Odin Sinsuat, but a few days later were transferred to General Santos.

Carolyn O. Arguillas