Megastar’s Mindanao moment: Sharon Cuneta considers visit to MILF camp a highlight of her life
While someone of Sharon Cuneta-Pangilinan’s celebrity status has met people from all walks of life, she said being in Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s (MILF) Camp Darapanan in Sultan Kudarat and meeting the leaders and community members there is “one of the highlights of my life.”
The Megastar accompanied her husband, former senator and senatorial candidate Kiko Pangilinan on Friday, May 2, in receiving the formal endorsement from the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP), the official political party of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Cuneta-Pangilinan said she asked specifically to “go back” to Mindanao “because I would like to meet them” after she failed to be in Lanao del Norte for the endorsement of MILF’s Kumander Bravo (Abdullah Macapaar), Front Commander of the Northwestern Mindanao Front-Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (NWMF-BIAF) and Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), last week.
“When I say I love Mindanao I do not say it very lightly. It has been in my heart since I was little. That’s why it was so important for me to come here today… (meeting the) heads of the MILF, to me, is one of the highlights of my life,” she told the UBJP and MILF Central Committee during a short program for their endorsement of Pangilinan’s candidacy.
The Megastar, in fact, calls Mindanao her “baby,” a fact well-known to her husband since she has always asked him about the progress in the region.
“Maya’t-maya po, kinukulit ko si Kiko and it’s been 20 plus years, napakarami pong problema sa Maynila at buong Pilipinas. But it has always been in my heart, my baby, I would always tell him that, ‘My baby, what about my baby?’,” she shared.
Her fascination of the Muslim culture started when she was still little, Cuneta-Pangilinan recalled, so when her husband won as senator in 2001, she immediately asked his office for all materials about Mindanao.
Since then, the Megastar has even launched a fundraiser for Marawi in 2018, which was well-documented on her Facebook and Instagram accounts.
“I have to let you know, we are all brothers and sisters, my love for you is real,“ she said.
Pangilinan, during the Aquino administration, provided advice to former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III during the deliberations on the Bangsamoro Basic Law.
He was also supportive of the Bangsamoro Organic Act in his last three years in the Senate and even voted in favor of it.
The former senator was also part of the bicameral conference committee to ensure that the key provisions that would give meaning to the autonomy and what the Bangsamoro struggle is all about will not get lost in the final version of the law.
