Text and Video by AMIEL MARK CAGAYAN
KIDAPAWAN CITY—A young Manobo man has found a way to make sure candidates keep their campaign promises: He plans to record political rallies on video, and show it to them when they get elected into office.
This is the plan 26-year-old Mutal Beto hatched after attending a three-week training on song composition and audio-visual production earlier this month. Beto, a Dulangan Manobo from Sultan Kudarat, was among 30 indigenous youth who took part in the training.
Other participants represented the Tedurays of North and South Upi in Maguindanao, the Arumanen Manobos of North Cotabato, the Dulangan Manobos of Sultan Kudarat, the T’boli and B’laan of South Cotabato, the Tagakaolo of Saranggani, and Matigsalug of Iligan and Bukidnon provinces.
The training was held Feb. 8-16 at the Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation mini-auditorium of DXND Kidapawan City. The first one last December was held in the same venue.
Although participants were taught to produce indigenous music videos, Beto found other uses for the video camera, apart from recording candidates’ campaign promises. He wants to produce a video that will teach his fellow Lumads (indigenous peoples) how to vote using the Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) machine.
“Sabihin nating mga IP lang kami, sayang din yung isang boto namin (our votes count event if we are just IPs),” Beto said.
Some of them come from far-flung and hard to reach areas to cast votes, he said, only for their votes to be invalidated because they do not know how to use PCOS machines.
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