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)
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)
