This developed as Governor Emmanuel Piñol, who earlier certified as urgent the resolution appropriating portions of the provinces’ R120-million calamity fund as assistance to the evacuees, said yesterday that relief assistance would be suspended until June if the 14-member Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) still fails to pass the resolution this Tuesday.

Piñol, whose nine-year reign ends on June 30, said that the SP members would be busy after March 27 because they would prepare for their reelection or candidacies for other positions.

"May the wrath of Allah fall on those people condoning our miseries in evacuation sites," the Cotabato City-based Mindanao Cross weekly tabloid yesterday quoted Bai Masla, mother of six, as imploring after learning about the continued boycott by some SP members of the council sessions.

Masla’s family is among some 7,000 people displaced by hostilities between the military and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) forces in Midsayap last January and early this month.

Several Midsayap evacuees bearing placards joined some 300 visitors who trooped to the SP session hall at the provincial capitol complex in Barangay Amas here last Tuesday to lobby with the board members to approve the aid resolution.

However, they went home dismayed since only Vice Governor Jesus Sacdalan and three board members – Shirlyn Macasarte-Espuelas, Nonard Bilbao and Manuel dela Serna – attended the session.

In his weekly program "Pareng Gob" over Catholic radio station dxND here last Wednesday, a visibly irked Piñol chided certain board members for "conniving" with each other in delaying the declaration of Midsayap under a state of calamity to hasten the release of the relief fund.

"These board members are afraid the money could be used in the (campaign) of administration candidates in the provincial government. It is a very sweeping conviction. They are wrong," he said.

Piñol said "it will be difficult to convene (the SP members) and muster a quorum during the campaign period, which starts next month."