Tabuk tribes modify unified peace pact

TABUK CITY, Kalinga Natives of Kalinga province, including ethno-linguistic groups here, adopted on Friday the unified ITabuk pagta (code of peace pact laws) which will expand the coverage of the indigenous justice system from the original tribe members to other ethnic groups who migrated in the city.

Engineer Andres Ngao-i, president of the Kalinga Bodong Council (KBC) and chairman of the Task Force created by city Mayor Ferdinand Tubban through an Executive Order, said the deal addresses the call of the migrants for their inclusion in the cultural practices of settling disputes despite their being “nonbinudngan” (original Ikalinga natives).

This came as the migrants felt the inequality in the application of the native practice.

“With this in effect, there will be no more discrimination in the implementation of the indigenous system even if you are a migrant or a native as long as you are a resident of the city,” he said.

He said Mayor Tubban issued EO 262017 in August 2017 “organizing a task force to formulate a unified ‘pagta’ for the city.”

The task force is composed of 11 members, three consultants and 36 ethnic group representatives to include the Tagalogs, Muslims, I-Benguet, Sadanga, Ilocano, Cagayanons, Mountain Province' tribes and sub-tribe representatives who deliberated and formulated the draft code which was presented and adapted by the community during Friday’s summit.

Ngao-i said the unified pagta, like the bilateral pagta of the sub tribes, which existed for almost a century now, will be used for generations by those who will come after them.

Tribes in Kalinga, he said, consider the community’s role and participation in the attainment of peace among the tribes, to keep the relationship of the people intact.

“Everybody shares and contributes to restore peace in cases when the peace pact is severed due to violations of one or more of the tribe members,” adding that the unified pagta was created by the members of the community for all residents in the city.

He said one of the important provisions of the peace pact, an adaption of the bilateral agreements of the sub-tribes, is the inclusion of the protection of visitors of those covered by the pagta, including the safety of their properties.

“If you are a visitor of a resident, you cannot be injured or your properties damaged or stolen because it would be a crime committed against the resident . In this case, the bodong holders are mandated to immediately act for reparation or restitution or to penalize the party who violated,” he added.

With the adoption, “we will fine tune it to

input the suggestions from representatives of the tribes and ethnolinguistic groups” with the final copy to be submitted to the legislative branch for them to come up with a resolution of support to the pagta, he added.

The draft was carefully crafted, adopting the existing national laws with the inclusion of the bilateral agreements between the sub-tribes of Kalinga and the cultural practices in settling disputes.

Ngao-i, who is also regional president of the council of elders of the Department of Education’s Indigenous Peoples Education (IPED), will push for pagta's inclusion in the curriculum of students in Tabuk.

Tubban, in a statement on Friday, said the “result of the ITabuk congress will be a standard by-laws of the different sub tribes which he hoped will be adopted by all sub-tribes in the city.

Former mayor Camilo Lammawin, who was also present during the Congress, reiterated that “peace process is a never ending work. It is not a magic which when signed will be adopted immediately but effort will have to be exerted to organize the people and make the residents hold on to their desire for peace.”

When Lammawin was mayor, he created the Matagoan bodong consultative council and started the consultation with the people of Tabuk but the issue of binudngan and non-binudngan had always barred the continuation of something that will cover everybody in Tabuk.

Lammawin congratulated the task force for the crafting the draft pagta.

“Making the pagta is difficult, many brains are needed to formulate it to come up with standards in handling the fast changing situation in the city,” and the task force was able to make one for the city.

City Council Committee on Rules chair Zorayda Wacnang said the “ratification, adaption of the task force’ draft means that we have an itabuk code of law that will be operative,” and will apply with uniformity to all Tabukeños.

“We drafted this regulation with the hope of furthering the propagation of peace, foster peace between and among community members of Tabuk city,” she said.

She added that the code is a creation of the people.

“Hopefully that they will take this as their own. This is mine, it is a social contract between the community and the government, a social contract between the state and the people,” she added.

More have yet to be done, she said, such as the translation of the final copy to Ilocano and the Kalinga dialect before the IEC will start to roll off in the communities and residences.