AMPATUANS ECLIPSE SOME OF THE WEALTHY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD

The Province of Maguindanao is one of the poorest provinces in the Philippines. But the Ampatuans who ruled as kings since 2001 have 26 mansions, many businesses and cash of about three (3) billion pesos. Each of these mansions has its own bank vault where money and firearms are stock as they prefer cash than bank accounts.

Their riches are shocking considering that Maguindanao is the third poorest province in the country according to the National Statistics and Coordination Board. It has a collapsed educational system that only 39.7 percent of adults in Maguindanao have six years of basic education. The vast majority of those are impoverished, illiterate people who are battling with what to eat for the day.

In Maguindanao alone, the Ampatuans have seven (7) mansions; in Davao City, fourteen (14) mansions; in Sultan Kudarat, three (3) mansions; and in Manila, two (2) mansions.

We are not willing, for one, to see the government which we formed and established placed in this anti-social, if not belligerent, attitude towards the sovereign people. We are not willing that these abusive public officials should exhibit such a spectacle of inequality and oppression on us, their master, and they, the servants, not the other way around as their corrupted and sin-blinded minds are leading us to confusion. It is about time we anchor their tragic souls firmly in their right places.

We are afraid to make them mad so we temper our words by calling these blatant liars nice polite things as Honourables. Our fear had sunk in deeper like the ocean floor. This time the people must assert and insist for these abusive public officials to cease and desist, effective immediately, from committing acts and assuming powers outside the mandate of the law.

Circumstances showing default of public service by these public officials are in publications- they steal, they lie, they break our will, sold and trampled our rights and freedom, and they manipulate us like a bull, attaching an emotional nose ring on us through fear so they can easily lead us around-- exploit us with the pretext of duty; and he who does not take them into consideration is not erroneous, but mad, metaphysically mad. A concerned citizen, never losing sight of principles, is to be guided by circumstances; and judging contrary to the exigencies of the moment, may ruin his country for ever.