Tacloban City Gov't vs. Leyte Prov'l Gov't




The Pintados Festival Foundation is allegedly being threatened by the city government of non-issuance of permit to stage their street parade.

Some of the organizers of the group have been identified with the Petilla camp (Prov'l Gov't), political nemesis of the Romualdezes (City Gov't).

The Pintados Festival Foundation had applied for permit for the scheduled June 27 parade last June 9 but up to this time, it has yet to be approved.

Eugene Tan, one of the city's most prominent businessmen and president of the Pintados Festival Foundation appeals to city and prov'l officials to stop their bickering and not to drag the Pintados Festival into their argues.

17 Jun 2009
No permit yet for Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival
by APRIL ROSE Q. UYKIENG

TACLOBAN CITY - The newly appointed Chief of Police of Tacloban City, Police Senior Superintendent Brigido Basio Unay, is not sure what measures or actions to take with regards the upcoming Pintados Kasadyaan Festival parade on June 27, 2009, in which the permit had already been submitted by the Province to City Mayor Alfred Romualdez's office for approval.

Unay said that "Mayor Romualdez will have to talk it out with the Pintados Kasadyaan Committee and the Pastoral Council, so as to have a smooth operation of the parade for that said date."

"We will not be able to pre-determine at this point in time of how to handle the situation, since both parties are still in the process of discussing what will be the best solution and to satisfy the interest of not only both parties concerned but the public as well," he said.

He added: "Whatever the outcome of that meeting, that's the time that we will enforce police for traffic and security measures around the city, as to how many policemen will be needed and for how long the parade would take," he said.

When a worst case scenario arises, for instance that the Mayor will not approve of the permit for the Pintados Kasadyaan Festival parade to proceed, Sr. Supt. Unay said he will maintain peace and order.

As what former Congresswoman Petilla had said, they already submitted the permit to have the parade and to have the street dancing on June 27 to the Mayor's Office.

It is up to the Mayor if he will give the Pintados Kasadyaan the chance to celebrate the Sr. Sto Niño festival, and that it has no political agenda, since it is a celebration of Leyte's patron saint.

Mrs. Petilla also said that "The Sangyaw is allowed to do the street dancing and parade on the 29th, then Kasadyaan Festival should also be given the same treatment, because it would be unfair to those people who want to celebrate and partake in the activities of the Pintados."

For the time being, Unay will wait for the decision from the City Mayor Alfred Romualdez and the Pastoral Council for the Pintados Kasadyaan Festival parade to proceed on June 27, 2009.


Source:
http://leytesamardaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7378&Itemid=233

this is the result of political rivalry between city government of tacloban & province of leyte... in short romualdez [alfred] vs petilla [matin]. taclobanons are starting to feel disappointed with what is currently happening in the city & province administration that they should be working in one force for the benefits of its constinuents/residents. let this political war/insecurities/differences be done in proper time, proper arena... thats on 2010 elections and not the business/private sectors be affected to all of this. to mayor alfred... be a good listeners not to your advisers who has personal interests but good listeners to your fellow taclobanons.

27 Jun 2009
RTC issues TRO vs Mayor Alfred not to stop today's Festival
by Eileen N. Ballesteros

TACLOBAN CITY - Regional Trial Court Exec. Judge Crisologo Bitas issued on Thursday a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) commanding the City Government through Mayor Alfred Romualdez to cease and desist from stopping and preventing the Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival parade and street dancing and the ritual presentations.

The TRO, which covers the mayor's representatives or agents, including officials, employees, police and similar forces acting for and in his behalf, also enjoins the aforementioned from consummating the serious threat to stop and prevent the said festival activities and/or the use (of) water cannons and such other underhanded methods upon the participants as a means to disperse or block them on Saturday June 27.

This TRO stemmed from a petition filed June 24 by the Pintados-Kasadyaan Executive Committee through its chairperson and Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation Vice President Remedios "Matin" Loreto-Petilla seeking legal remedy in a case for Certiorari and Mandamus with Prayer for Issuance of Preliminary Mandatory Injunction And or Issuance of a 72-Hour Temporary Restraining Order.

On June 15, City Administrator Roberto Muñoz wrote the Festival Execom Chairperson Petilla informing of the denial of the request stating "The City Government has the sole authority to disallow any activity in connection with our City Fiesta that are not coordinated with the Tacloban City Tourism Council."

It further informed that should the Pintados-Kasadyaan Foundation "opt to join the June 29 Parade, you are welcome to join us as participants " not as an organizer." Further, the letter reminded that no public activity such as a Parade can be held without a permit from the chief exec of the LGU where the activity will be held as provided in Rep. Act 7160 or the Local Government Code.

In its Petition, the Foundation averred, "denying the issuance of a Special Permit for the Pintados Kasadyaan Festival Parade and Street Dancing slated on June 27, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. will render the contingents effort futile but also will deprive them of their constitutional right to free expression of their cultural and religious heritage and celebration."

PAGCOR VP Petilla, who personally filed the case at the RTC Office of the Clerk of Court assisted by counsel Atty. Peter Panis, was earlier granted authority by the Pintados Foundatidon Inc. in a resolution numbered 01, series of 2009.

The resolution was signed by the Pintados Foundation Corporate Secretary Evelina Acebedo and attested by its president Eugene Tan as well as its members namely, Atty. Roque Tiu, Wilson Uy, Erwin Alcala, Stephen Lagarde, Tito Aures and Nestor Villasin. Other members namely, Agustin Uykim, Henry Gosyco, Virgilio Andrade, Emmanuel Veloso, Atty. Henry Yaokasin and Jorge Yu failed to affix their signature.

She was likewise designated by Gov. Carlos Jericho Petilla as chairperson of the 23rd Pintados Festival and 14th Kasadyaan Festival of Festivals as embodied in Memo No. 09-1565 dated May 4, 2009.

Lawyers Sergio Sumayod and Jeffrey Didulo, City Legal and Assistant Legal Officers respectively, as well as Bernardita Valenzuela, the City Mayor's Action Center chief, tried to have an audience with Exec. Judge Bitas. They, however, failed as the Judge was conducting a trial in his chamber at the time they went to his office.

The case is scheduled for raffle among the different branches of this Court on June 29, 2009 at 9 oclock in the morning before this Court. Parties and counsels were directed to be present during the said hearing to be held at the sala of Exec. Judge Bitas.


Source:
http://leytesamardaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7526&Itemid=233

27 Jun 2009
Mayor Romualdez denies any plan to stop Pintados-Kasadyaan rite
by MIRIAM GARCIA DESACADA

TACLOBAN CITY - Mayor Alfred Romualdez has denied that he has any intention whatsoever and has never planned to stop or prevent the organizers of the Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival from performing its parade, street dancing, presentation and rites today.

In a news conference yesterday, Mayor Romualdez expressed sadness and lamented about the issuance of the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) last Thursday by Regional Trial Court Executive Judge Crisologo Bitas commanding the city government through him (Mayor Romualdez) to cease and desist from stopping and preventing the Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival parade and street dancing and ritual presentations today, Saturday, June 27.

The TRO, which covers the mayor's representatives or agents, including officials, employees, police and similar forces acting for and in his behalf, also enjoins the aforementioned from consumating the serious threat to stop and prevent the said festival activities and/or the use (of) water cannons and such other underhanded methods upon the participants as a means to disperse or block them today.

"I have no intention to stop Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival from performing its activities. Never as a mayor of Tacloban will I violate the law or create disturbances ... I am sad with the court decision as I am only 10 meters away not to be available to discuss these things. I am appealing to Taclobanons to stay calm and not to panic. I will abide with the TRO hoping for a peaceful and festive fiesta celebrations of Tacloban at ako'y umiiwas na sa political," Romualdez said.

The city mayor said that Mrs. Petilla (Remedios L. Petilla, former Leyte governor and former Leyte 1st district representative and presently PAGCOR Vice Chairman) has been talking in media interviews that with or without permit the parade (Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival) will go on.

He added that in two separate letters from former conmgresswoman Petilla and Governor Jericho Petilla dated June 8, 2009 and May 4, 2009, respectively, it informed him that they will be celebrating the 23rd Pintados and 14th Kasadyaan Festival of Festivals and its scheduled June 27 parade without first applying a permit for the use of the streets around the city.

"I remember January pa lang Mrs. Petilla has been attacking me at lagi akong hinahamon... kailan pa ba tayo magbabago... na para bang suggesting public disturbance to the people aba ay politica na ito," he said.

On his part, Gov. Petilla in an interview immediately after he arrived at the DZR airport yesterday said he was happy about the favorable decision of the court from keeping the Pintados-Kasadyaan safe from any threat to be stopped from holding its activities like the street dancing parade.

"I am happy about this development...Sad, of course, kay sugad-sugad nga deri nagkakausa an duha nga local government units han Leyte and Tacloban City with their own reasons from both sides," the governor told reporters.


Source:
http://leytesamardaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7525&Itemid=233

29 Jun 2009
Petty politics in Tacloban City
By Ramon Tulfo

MANILA, Philippines - I went to Tacloban City over the weekend for the annual reunion of our high school class.

The Waray-Waray trait of toughness-as a popular song goes, "Waray-Waray handang matodas (Waray-Waray is ready to die)"-somehow rubbed off on me.

Whenever life deals me a bad card, I stick to the trait I learned from the Warays as an adolescent.

Behind the tough Waray exterior is a very generous heart. A Waray invites strangers to his home to partake of food on his table during a fiesta.

I regret having to leave yesterday, the eve of the city's fiesta, a much-celebrated event in the Tacloban calendar.

But if ordinary Taclobanons are magnanimous, their leaders are petty.

Pettiness is nowhere more evident than in Mayor Alfred Romualdez disallowing the holding of the Pintados, a parade where participants, their faces painted, dance in the streets much like Aklan's Ati-atihan, last Saturday, three days before the fiesta.

Romualdez did not honor a court order lifting his ban on the holding of the yearly parade.

The parade organizers, however, held the parade anyway in complete disobedience to the mayor's order.

City policemen, ordered to block the parade, would have clashed with fellow policemen assigned in the province and the regional command who escorted the Pintados revelers, but did not.

Why did the mayor try to prevent the holding of the yearly parade?

Because he had his own parade similar to the Pintados-the "Sangyaw."

Pintados is sponsored by the provincial governor, Jericho Petilla, whose family is an arch political rival of the Romualdezes.

Politics is supposed to make people magnanimous, but in Tacloban City, it has made a petty tyrant.

The great politician, Daniel Z. Romualdez, once a Speaker of the House of Representatives, a grand-uncle of the mayor's, must be turning in his grave.


Source:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/metro/view/20090630-213078/Petty-politics-in-Tacloban-City

29 Jun 2009
Isn't the merrier the better?

Even a dictator doesn't have that monopoly of culture. How anxious then was the wait for the outcome of the threat to deny permit to the Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival. For a time, the matter of allowing the province to stage the show on the city's streets hung in suspended curiosity. Will a tradition that has been going on long before proud Tacloban became a Highly Urbanized City be now quashed that it is? Does HUC mean nothing can happen anymore if the city head doesn't like it? The promoters behind the cultural affair could only think that they are not even asking to stage a political rally, which is indeed guaranteed by the Constitution.

But as far as city authorities are concerned, they would have nothing of the traditional Mardi Gras anymore. The city mayor even went on to threaten with dire consequence should the organizers and participating municipalities proceed against his will. The fundamental law says that no law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech. Grant that the royal highness at Kanhuraw is seeing the innocent dance festival as a political statement of some foes. Is not preventing it tantamount to making laws of his own republic? It is only a simple cultural show. Is he now surpassing the conjugal rape of democracy by his kin, three decades ago?

Nobody begrudges the City Hall for putting its own creation, the Sangyaw Festival, in the center stage. Nobody complains of having been bumped off the eve of the Sto. Nino fiesta, the traditional day of the holding of the high-spirited Pintados that the folks in this province have used to know. The Sangyaw Show is a most welcome addition, even if many would certainly miss the former on the city government's appropriated schedule for the event. The new flavor still makes the celebration more worth it. But why throw out the previous for good, if there are still philanthropic souls willing enough to foot the bill? Isn't the merrier at least the better?

More than disappointed, we are appalled of the attempt to crush a tradition that has outlived the ravages of recent history. In the restored democracy that replaced a regime of dark repression for fourteen years, there is now such a thing as freedom of expression. The Pintados-Kasadyaan show is not even a political mass action calling for the overthrow of the powers-that-be. It is only a form of cultural expression that reflects on an ethnic past. It is only an attempt at reenactment of what a people has been a long time ago. Why heap political ire on the show?

The Pintados event has become popular even in other regions, and a source of pride by municipalities as well as their leaderships around Tacloban. This is yet so even if the urban center has already separated from the mother unit to proudly become an HUC. Is the nephew of an ousted dictator now the one to sentence it to death?


Source:
http://leytesamardaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7530&Itemid=235

01 Jul 2009
Archbishop Palma urges prov'l, city officials to unite
by Joey A. Gabieta

Archbishop Jose Palma (3rd from left) leads in celebrating the Pontifical Mass yesterday in honor of the Sto. Niño, patron saint of Tacloban City, which held its 120th fiesta celebration on June 30. Joining the archbishop are some six bishops from all over Eastern Visayas and about a hundred priests from the Palo archdiocese. (Toto Delmonte)

TACLOBAN CITY - The region's highest prelate, Archbishop Jose Palma, exhorted officials from the city and the province to unite for them to achieve their goals that would benefit their respective constituents.
Palma made his appeal to city and provincial officials during his over 30 minutes Homily during yesterday's Pontifical Mass marking the 120th city fiesta.

Officials of the two local government units need each other reason that they should not turn against each other, the archbishop of the Palo stressed.

"We need one another. Our city needs the province (as) the province needs the city," the archbishop said in his Homily attended by thousands of faithful at the Santo Niño Church.

He added: "If we believe that we need other people to lead (our) people, we can say that we are the happiest in the world."

His call was heard loud and clear by Mayor Alfred Romualdez who led the Romualdez-Marcos pack who attended the two-hour Pontifical Mass.

Present were his aunt, former First Lady Imelda Marcos, cousin Representative Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, wife Councilor Cristina Gonzales- Romualdez and his father, former Mayor Alfredo "Bejo" Romualdez, among others.

Conspicuously absent was Leyte Governor Carlos Jericho Petilla, his mother Remedios and their key political allies who normally attend the Pontifical Mass in previous years.

The two influential political families accused each other of undermining the holding of their respective cultural festivals during the city fiesta.

The Pintados-Kasadyaan Festival is identified with the Petillas while Mayor Romualdez revived the Sangyaw Festival two years ago. The said festival was a brainchild of his aunt, Imelda.

In last year's plebiscite on the bid of Tacloban to become a highly urbanized city (HUC), Mayor Romualdez and Gov. Petilla also traded accusations against each other. The HUC bid of Tacloban was supported by majority of the city's voters effectively making the city no longer part of the administrative control of the province.

Archbishop Palma said that unity not only among political leaders but also even within the community level and the Church would result to peace.

"We need to pray for peace. If there is no peace, there is a Child that is most affected," he said, referring to the city's patron saint, Señor Santo Niño, whom Palma described to be the "Prince of Peace."

"(Hope) there will be peace in our land; will there be peace in our hearts," Palma added.

In his homily, Palma repeatedly underscore the need for peace saying that the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), of he is a permanent member, adding that peace is a very important factor in achieving social change.

He said that this year was declared by the CBCP as the "Year of the Two Hearts for Peace-Building and Lay Participation for Social Change" and likewise as the "Year of the Priests."


Source:
http://leytesamardaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7579&Itemid=233

simple la.
Its like "Samar needs Leyte, Leyte needs Samar".
"The city needs the province, the province needs the city"

yeah .. but try to explain that to Mayor Alfred and the Petillas .. !!

..ganda ng dalawang pusang nag aaway! wehehe!!
anu kaya ang pinag aagawan nila??

pusang kulay orange ba ang taga tacloban city dyan??

Hindi siguro sila nag-aaway, nagpapagandahan lang sila ng tali sa leeg..heheh

Anyway sana itigil na nila ang awayan dahil naapektuhan na ang mga nakasanayang tradisyon ng lungsod. Pangit sa mata ng mga bisitang iniimbetahan ng siyudad kung malaman na may iringan pa lang nangyayari sa likod ng mga nasa posisyon. Santisima!

Hindi sila nakakatulong..

wheehehe.
pambihira na man yung mga tali na iyan.

but do you agree that "everybody want to rule the world"??!

Yes! i do agree..i think everyone wants to rule the world, kagaya ni megatron..hehe

Kidding aside, kahuna ko han una an petilla ngan romualdez magkamag-anak. hehe magkaiba ngayan.

So whats the reason behind the rivalry of two of the most popular family in leyte?