KIDAPAWAN CITY – At least five provincial governors and more than a hundred Muslim mayors in the politically turbulent South are prepared to swear en masse over the Qur’an to abide by the Omnibus Election Code to ensure a peaceful and honest election in their respective areas in May 2010.

Lawyer Oscar Sampulna, executive secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), said the region’s inter-agency peace and order council wants the event witnessed by the regional police director and representatives of the military.

In an interview, Mayor Lampa Pandi of Poona Bayabao, an interior town in the first district of Lanao del Sur, said they are to submit a manifesto to the ARMM Gov. Datu Zaldy Uy Ampatuan stipulating their willingness to swear over the Qur’an that they are to religiously adhere to the policies of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) during the election period, which starts this month with the filing of certificates of candidacy by aspirants for various elective positions.

“That will not be a difficult thing to do because all of us in the ARMM, from our regional governor, down to the provincial governors, mayors, vice mayors, provincial board members and town councilors all belong to the administration’s Lakas-Kampi-CMD,” said Pandi, who, as a physician, had served as ARMM’s regional secretary prior to his election as mayor of Poona-Bayabao in 2007.

Pandi said mayors from Lanao del Sur, led by their provincial governor, Mamintal Adiong Jr., will pledge to help ensure peaceful elections in their respective areas to the ARMM’s police director, Chief Supt. Paisal Umpa, and Ampatuan during a state-of-the region address (SORA) slated on November 9 in Cotabato City.

Sampulna, who is Ampatuan’s spokesman, said the SORA will focus on the Southern peace process and his administration’s effort to foster solidarity among the region’s Muslim and Christian residents.