Chief Supt. Felizardo Serapio said he designated the province’s police director to head Task Force Musa, which he organized Sunday, a day after retired district supervisor Musa Dimasidsing of Pagalungan, was shot to death in Pikit, North Cotabato.
The probe will delve on how Dimasidsing was caught in the ‘political quagmire’ of two warring political clans in Pagalungan.
Pagalungan was the only town in Maguindanao where elections were intense between opposing political clans of the Montawal and Matalam, both natives of the place.
Relatives of Dimasidsing, who asked not to be named for fear of their lives, told media that the victim was killed because of his refusal to sign an affidavit that the elections in Pagalungan were orderly and peaceful.
He had been in hiding and one of the areas where he sought refuge was an Islamic school in Pikit. After weeks of hiding, howwer, the killers found and silenced him.
Dimasidsing was buried on Sunday in his hometown in Datu Paglas, also a town in Maguindanao, some 55 kilometers east of this city.
Serapio is not also discounting possibilities that Dimasidsing’s killing was due to a personal grudge and that he was a victim of ‘mistaken identity.’
The situations in Pagalungan, police officials said, has not improved, even after the winning candidates were already proclaimed by the town’s Board of Canvassers.
“I will not go back to my village because anytime there can be armed fighting and we don’t want to be caught in crossfire,” said Sally, a volunteer teacher of the Arms are for Hugging School, a project initiated by the Community Family Services International (CFSI), a non-government organization based in Cotabato City.
Sally has been in the evacuation site in Pikit town since fighting erupted in Pagalungan last April.
At least 5,000 families from Pagalungan are still languishing in different evacuation sites in Pikit.
