GMA announces more holidays

MANILA, Philippines - President Arroyo will declare Nov. 27 and 28, 2009 as non-working holidays in celebration of the Eid’l Adha or the “Feast of Sacrifice,” the culmination of the Islamic world’s Hariraya Hajj or the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

The dates fall on a Friday and a Saturday.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body determines the exact dates of the annual celebration, considered as the fifth pillar of Islam.

“The Philippine government officially issues this declaration in consultation with the Saudi Arabian Embassy in the Philippines, represented by Ambassador Mohammad Ameen Wali,” Ermita said in a statement.

“Both the business and labor sectors, through the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Labor and Employment, have been consulted today and have posed no objection to this declaration,” he said.

Eid’l Adha is the second major Islamic festival celebrated by an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims all over the world, including the 10 million Muslim Filipinos in the country. The first one, the Eid’l Fitr or the “Festival of Breaking Fast,” is celebrated two months earlier.

These two Islamic festivals are observed annually beginning with early morning prayers at the mosque then followed by colorful festivities.

This year’s declaration by the President of Eid’l Adha as a national holiday is seen as a major improvement in the implementation of Republic Act 9177, which celebrates the event as a holiday only in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), he said.

RA 9177, issued in July 2002, declares the first day of Shawwal, the tenth month of the Islamic calendar, a national holiday for the observance Eid’l Fitr.

However, the same law declares the twelfth month of the Islamic calendar only as a regional holiday in the ARMM for the observance of Eid’l Adha, he said.