ZAMBOANGA CITY – Mayor Beng Climaco said she will toe the line of the Liberal Party (LP) on its choice for President Aquino’s successor, but never will she ever compromise her stand against any attempt to include Zamboanga City in the Bangsamoro autonomous region that the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) seeks to establish in Mindanao.
Climaco said she is a loyal LP member herself and will always follow and abide by the party’s decision to endorse Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, or anybody for that matter, as its standard bearer in the 2016 presidential elections.
“I will support whoever the party will choose for president, but I will remain firm against the BBL,” she said.
Climaco said she knew Roxas long before he became cabinet secretary and that the people of Zamboanga City are strongly opposed to inclusion in Bangsamoro and “our stand will remain way” even if he will be the president.
Roxas was among the hardcore oppositors to the now defunct memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD) that majority of the Zamboangaueños had also opposed in 2008 under then President Gloria Arroyo.
The Supreme Court eventually declared the MOA-AD as unconstitutional and contrary to law.
Just as everybody thought the MOA-AD was dead issue, Pres. Aquino came up with yet another form of autonomy, this time the Bangsamoro under the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. (Vic Larato)
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