SENADO 2016, sino nga ba?
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Nariman Ambolodto
Liberal Party
Born: 14 February 1968, Maguindanao
The leadership of Maguindanao fell into the hands of Nariman Ambolodto following the arrest of its former governor Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr.
The Ampatuan patriarch of the entrenched political clan got implicated in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, the country’s worst case of election-related violence which killed 58 people, garnering international attention as the single deadliest event for journalists in history, wherein 32 of the 58 slain were media practitioners.
In a province slowly recovering from a national tragedy, Ambolodto quickly took charge and convinced foreign donor agencies to continue providing support services to Maguindanao after the withdrawal of official development assistance following the massacre, in effect stabilizing the operations of the provincial government during her one-year stint as governor.
Ambolodto, a lesser-known candidate along with COOP NATCCO Party List representative Cresente Paez were late additions to the Liberal Party senatorial slate, following the last minute pull-out of former MMDA chairman Francis Tolentino and Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista.
The only Muslim in the LP senatorial ticket avidly champions for peace in Mindanao as her main advocacy, expressing the urgent need to pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) in its current form to streamline the peace process. Having personally experienced living as a bakwit in the 1970’s where she lived at the banks of the Cotabato River for 14 years along with other displaced Mindanaoans, she maintains that only the creation of an autonomous Bangsamoro identity and government structure would lead to true and lasting peace in war-torn Mindanao, bringing about prosperity and stability in a region that has lagged in development for so long.
In a speech at a Liberal Party event, Ambolodto re-affirmed her promise to achieve inclusive peace in Mindanao, "Ang digmaan sa Mindanaw, maari nating iwasan, maari nating pigilan…Nagmula man tayo sa magkakaibang kasaysayan, paniniwala o tribu, isa lamang ang bayang ating ginagalawan, walang dahilan para hindi tayo magkaisang humubog ng kinabukasan na walang naiiwan, isang kinabukasan ng kapayapaan, kaunlaran at kasaganaan."
In a country where men dominate the political sphere, Ambolodto hopes to become the country’s second Muslim woman senator after Santanina Tillah-Rasul who served at the Senate from 1987 to 1995. At the same time, she envisions a time when traditional gender roles are redefined by those who step up and go beyond certain societal expectations, dreaming of the day when women’s participation and input are able to receive just as much value in policy-making, community governance and nation-building, especially of Muslim communities.
“We should disabuse others from this notion that we do not have able Muslim women leaders, and that they are not empowered,” she says, citing her personal idol Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s first female prime minister who established an underground military movement to fight a military dictatorship, eventually restoring democracy at the young age of 35.
She believes that the passage of the BBL will not only resolve the peace crisis in Mindanao but provide more chances for women to participate in politics, “We now have a chance to establish another political entity which we hope will preserve, protect and promote the collective and ethnic cultures, rights, welfare and aspirations of the Moro people. As the Bangsamoro moves forward, there will be more prospects and opportunities for women in governance and development.”
Ambolodto’s first venture into politics was serving as founding vice-mayor of Northern Kabuntalan, a municipality that came with the creation of a new province, Sharif Kabunsuan in 2006.The regional legislative council of ARMM often creates new units of local government to keep peace within the different feuding clans. The neophyte politician also served as the lone female representative at the provincial legislative council.
A year later, the Supreme Court dissolved the province of Sharif Kabunsuan, ruling that the creation of provinces was not within the jurisdiction of the regional council of ARMM. Sharif Kabunsuan was re-absorbed into Maguindanao where Ambolodto continued to represent the first district of Maguindanao as a provincial board member until 2010.
After she was appointed acting governor of Maguindanao, Ambolodto was tapped by the late Secretary Jesse Robredo in 2010 to serve as Assistant Secretary for Muslim Affairs and Special Concerns in the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG).
She took up Banking and Finance at the Notre Dame University and obtained her master’s in Islamic Studies at the University of the Philippines-Diliman as an Institute Scholarship Grantee. Before her political career, she was a senior lecturer at the sociology department in Notre Dame University, her alma mater. She is married to human rights lawyer Suharto “Teng” Ambolodto.
References
http://www.ndbcnews.com.ph/news/ina-ambolodto-hopes-to-become-second-muslim-woman-senator
http://politics.com.ph/8-things-to-know-about-lp-senatorial-bet-ambolodto/
http://www.tribune.net.ph/nation/meet-ina-a-contemporary-muslim-mother
http://asiafoundation.org/in-asia/2010/01/06/mending-maguindanao-after-the-massacre/