May 17, 2019
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MAGUINDANAO LADY GOVERNOR. Election officials raised the hands of Maguindanao Governor-elect Bai Mariam Sangki-Mangudadatu (4th from left) on Thursday (May 16) at Shariff Kabunsuan Complex in Cotabato City together with the province’s Congressman-elect Datu Ronne Sinsuat (3rd from left), Vice Governor-elect Datu Lester Sinsuat, and several elected board members of the province. Sangki-Mangudadatu is the first-ever lady governor of the 46-year-old province. (Photo courtesy of Ella Dayawan – Bandera Radio Cotabato)
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COTABATO
CITY -- The
Commission on Elections (Comelec) has proclaimed outgoing Mayor Bai Mariam
Sangki-Mangudadatu of Datu Abdullah Sangki town as the governor-elect of
Maguindanao province on Thursday afternoon.
Sangki-Mangudadatu
made history as the first-ever lady governor of the 46-year-old province after
winning over his closest rival, Freddie Mangudadatu, by more than 54,000 votes
in the province’s 36 municipalities during the May 13 mid-term polls.
“From now on, the
welfare of the people of Maguindanao always come first before anything else,”
she said when interviewed by reporters here following her proclamation.
The lady
governor-elect is the wife of Governor-elect Suharto Mangudadatu of Sultan
Kudarat province, who is the cousin of Freddie Mangudadatu, the outgoing mayor
of Mangudadatu town in Maguindanao.
The Comelec’s
Provincial Board of Canvassers (PBOC), which held the 4 p.m. proclamation at
the Shariff Kabunsuan Complex, the seat of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in
Muslim Mindanao here, said Sangki-Mangudadatu garnered a total of 256,338 votes
to clinch the gubernatorial post as against Freddie’s 201,565 votes.
Also proclaimed
were Datu Lester Sinsuat as vice governor-elect of Maguindanao and Datu Ronnie
Sinsuat as Congressman-elect of the province’s first district.
Hours earlier on
the same day, the PBOC correspondingly proclaimed outgoing Maguindanao Governor
Esmael Mangudadatu as the Congressman-elect of the province’s second district
together with his son, King Jazer, as board member for the same provincial
district. (PNA)
