Meeting a Moro Brigade Commander Turned Village Chief

By Mortz C. Ortigoza
 

At last I stumbled into the Muslim village chairman, colloquially or tritely called Kapitan, of Dugong, M’lang, Cotabato when I was driving a car bound to the houses of my maternal uncle and auntie located at the heart of the village.

Aside from being the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) Brigade Commander of the M’lang, Matalam, and Makilala towns, Barangay Chairman Noah Zabel impressed me about his witty, funny, and educated posts at Facebook.

“How lucky I am to meet the honorable Kapitan and not Colonel Rody Celeste who is probably drunk now,” I cracked a joke at the expense of my retired army uncle who loved to swig beer bottle, son of a gun the jumbo one, before I extended my right hand to shake with the amused kapitan.

BRASS. Author and Dugong, M'lang, Cotabato Barangay Chairman Noah Zabel.

“He was probably there quaffing beer,” the portly probably 5 feet and 7 inches Zabel gestured his chin at the nearby sari-sari store owned by a son of an Ilocano settler.

In that 5 P.M Friday meeting, Zabel was with No. 6 Councilor Danny Cacacho, an Ilocano, where they sat at the bamboo walled and G.I sheets roofed lounged perched at my mother’s farm land and overlooking the swanky security cameras protected barangay hall and a gym.

“He married Rody’s younger sister Robina,” by referring to Cacacho who told me he saw me when we were kids in the village that is just spit away at the great Liguasan Marsh.

“You’re an educated person,” I told Zabel after seeing in the past his posts at Facebook.

Gee whiz, I reminisced what British Special Air Service (SAS) Captain John Patrick Mason 

(Sean Connery who acted as higly classified prisoner) retorted to FBI Special Agent Dr. 

Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) when the former quipped a  Latin phrase from Aeneid:

 “Well, timeo danaos et dona ferentis” for a quid pro quo released as a 

high level 30 years covert prisoner of the FBI in the flick’s The Rock.

"l fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts," the sissy looking Dr. Goodspeed 

translated what the hardened SAS mumbled.

“Oh, an educated man!” Mason reacted. 

The kap said after joining the MILF that was then fighting for secession in the early 1980s, he contemplated that he had no future with it thus he went to Iligan City and pursue his college education there.

“I took Bachelor of Arts ”.

“Oh, that’s why you’re perceptive on various social issues,” I retorted to him in my English, Tagalog, and Ilonggo.

But he returned in the huge MILF Camp Abubakar in Barira, Maguindanao as member of the Judge Advocate General Office (JAGO) and was promoted because of merits to the rank of colonel.

“I joined the military from my political affairs assignment” he cited the latest post as member of the armed group of the MILF.

Because of his accomplishments he was designated by the power-that-be as brigade commander overseeing three towns.

 I told him his post was equivalent to the Armed Forces of the Philippines ranked of one star general.

He nodded.

In 2002 during the stint of Mayor Luigie Cuerpo, a mestizo Hispanic, he ran but lost to an Ilocano rival for the chieftainship of Dugong after it was vacated by my uncle Leodegario Celeste-Celestial.

“He was fair. Muslims respected him because he was a fair man,” he said about my uncle whose parents came from Bingawan, Iloilo Province as settlers in the 1930s.

Luding’s term of office eclipsed Ferdinand Marcos government as president and dictator of our present lethal Corona Virus-19 besieged Republic.

“I lost the poll,” he recalled because majority of the voters in the agricultural village, that hosted palay and banana plants and freshwater fishes, are Christian settlers from Iloilo and northern Luzon and their descendants.

But when my first cousin Bebot, my uncle Luding, and Bonifacio Cortado ran for the 2013 barangay election, Zabel saw the folly of these Christians where he “slaughtered” them in the ballot boxes.

“I won more than one hundred votes against your cousin,” he cited.

He said if Luding and Cortado, a Saluyot, er, Ilocano, did not join the race he would surely lose again the poll.

   In the last 2019 election, he was prodded by Mayor Russel Abonado and Vice Mayor Lito Pinol, a former nine years’ mayor, to run for the membership of the Sangguniang Bayan (town legislative body) but lost.

“Tatlo abi kami nga Muslim nagdalagan ti amo nga napirdi ako kay minority man lang mga voters sang Muslim dire (Three Muslims vied for the councillorship and I lost because Muslim voters are minority in the town),”he told me in his eloquent Ilonggo by referring to Moro rivals who lived in Barangays Gaunan and Dungo-an.

Have you joined the Mujahedin who fought in the guerrilla war versus the heretic Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan in the 1979 to 1989 war just like Sheik Salamat Hashim,  Qaddafi Aburazak , Qaddafi Janjalani and the almost 600 braved Moros?

“I should be joining the Mujahedin there but for the reason beyond my control it did not materialize,” he told me.

“Aw sayang. You should be carrying those U.S made stingers (Man-Portable Air Defense System (MANPADS) heat seeking missiles) and pot shooting those Russian made MIG jets and  attack combat helicopters," I said.

The portable lethal missiles were major factors for the Soviets to withdraw their version of the U.S loss in the Vietnam war.

Since becoming the kapitan of the rustic village, Christians and Muslims alike are impressed how this minority member village chairman run his turf with his tireless active services, chutzpah, and humor.

In his latest Facebook post he played words on those people who ridiculed if not denounced those corrupt Filipino kapitans and kagawads (village council members) amid the distribution of relief goods and the Social Amelioration Program(SAP) after the nation reeled to economic crisis as being brought by the killer phantom Corona Virus Disease-19 pandemic:

Katong kusog mag post nga may pinilian si Kopitan kag si kakawat, may ara ako gigahin sa inyo sa inyo nga pormas tawag lang para ma check kon qualified ka. Salamat( Those who vigorously posted at Facebook about those thieving kapitans and kagawads I have SAP forms for you. Just call me so I can check them if you are qualified for the financial assistance. Thank you).

“Kung ikaw ay poorest among the poor kag pinsar mo qualified ka sa SAP, tawaga ko kay ihatod ko sa imo ang bulig sang gobyerno buwas sang aga pa gid. Salamat (If you’re member of the poorest of the poor and you think you are qualified for the financial assistance (P5000. 00 per household) just ring me a call.

Zabel was the first barangay chairman who posted at his thee million pesos’ barangay hall (nearby a gym constructed under the intercession of Congressman Pingping Tejada) the list of those beneficiaries of the Social Amelioration Program of the national government to mitigate the impact of the more than month long locked down of the local government units in the Philippines.
This as ordered last March 16 by President Rodrigo Duterte to fight the pandemic killer Corona Virus Disease-19.

“Transparency. Para makita ng tao kung sino puwede siyang mag reklamo,” he told this columnist when he joined last Saturday at the gym the DSWD in distributing the P5,000 SAP to the 354 approved recipients.

Dugong has 5,700 population and 1, 091 households according to the Moro brigade commander turned village chief.

READ MY OTHER BLOG/COLUMN:

The General Who Saved Mindanao

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)