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Home/ stevenwarran's Library/ Notes/ September 14, 1996, Seattle Times / Chicago Tribune, Out Of The Jungle, Into Hot Water -- Former Rebel Turned Governor Offends Women With Comments, by Uli Schmetzer,

September 14, 1996, Seattle Times / Chicago Tribune, Out Of The Jungle, Into Hot Water -- Former Rebel Turned Governor Offends Women With Comments, by Uli Schmetzer,

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Nur Misuari

September 14, 1996, Seattle Times / Chicago Tribune, Out Of The Jungle, Into Hot Water -- Former Rebel Turned Governor Offends Women With Comments, by Uli Schmetzer, 

MANILA, Philippines - Muslim guerrilla leader Nur Misuari, who signed a peace accord with the government earlier this month, was quickly rewarded by being elected as governor of southern Mindanao last week.

But someone forgot to tell Misuari, a man who has two wives and fundamentalist Islamic beliefs, that male chauvinism has become a political liability since he went into the jungle 20 years ago to fight for a Muslim homeland in the Philippines.

The bearded professor of political science kindled the fury of Filipino women with the comment that "a woman is not normal without a man of her own."

Former presidential candidate Miriam Santiago immediately likened Misuari's remark to that of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos who, commenting on Corazon Aquino's chances to beat him in general elections in 1986, quipped, "A woman's place is in the bedroom."

His political opponent

The target of Misuari's observation is 75-year-old widow Maria Clara Lobregat, the elected Mindanao member of Parliament. She represents the island's Christian majority and shares their staunch opposition to a special Muslim Development Council, which will run 14 Mindanao provinces for the next three years prior to a plebiscite.

Some of her constituents have promised armed resistance to the Muslim takeover. Christian militias last weekend showed their arsenals of weapons to the media and Philippine President Fidel Ramos on Tuesday ordered the army and the police to disarm the vigilantes - if they can be found.

Misuari, the leader of the Moro National Liberation Front whose war with the army cost 120,000 lives over the last two decades - was undaunted by the resentment he had stirred with his outburst against Lobregat.

He ordered all Muslims to consider Lobregat as haram (forbidden) and joked he would rather drift out to sea in a boat without oars than marry a woman like her.

Violates code of conduct

A formidable foe on the battlefield, Misuari is treading on thin ice with his remarks about women in a country often considered a matriarchy. In the Philippines, many a politician had to bury his aspirations for high office after a public quarrel with a woman.

Marcos lost to Aquino. Speaker Jose Laurel was a presidential front-runner until he slapped a bar girl at a nightclub. Another presidential hopeful in the 1980s fell out of the running after he shouted in public at an old woman who had asthma.

"Nur Misuari is undoubtedly a Muslim. But there are grave doubts that he is a Filipino and a gentleman," wrote a newspaper columnist, Ninez Cacho Olivares, of Misuari's remarks. "Under our unwritten code of conduct, a Filipino male never, never quarrels publicly or slaps down a woman in public, especially an elderly woman,"

Wherever women met this week, in fast-food bars, the hairdresser or on buses, Misuari's barbed comments were the chief topic of discussion. Were they a threat to womens' rights or just the gaffe of someone who had lost touch with the outside world?

"May Allah have mercy on the female souls in Mindanao," concluded one newspaper columnist while others called the new Muslims governor "a chauvinist pig who sounds like a barroom brawler."

'Sexist street justice'

The rebel-turned-governor is already in hot water with Filipino women after one adviser explained his boss took a second younger wife "because a man needs regular sex with a young attractive woman to achieve his full potential."

And commentators recalled that in the past women in Mindanao who refused to wear the veil had their hair shorn off by indignant fundamentalists denouncing them as "temptresses."

Wrote columnist Rina Jimenez-David: "I wonder if such forms of sexist street justice will not be more common under your administration if all of your officials think the same way about women. Say it ain't so."

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