Thank heavens, float parade goes smoothly

BAGUIO CITY — With nary a drop of rain, yesterday’s parade of 34 flower-bedecked floats, a culmination of the city’s month-long Panagbenga Festival, went on smoothly.

The scene was a total reversal of Saturday’s street dancing parade when a heavy downpour drenched the daintily clad participants, many of them elementary pupils. It was the first time in nine years that the festival got rained out.

The thousands who lined up Session Road as early as 7:30 a.m. yesterday occasionally looked up to the sky to detect any hint of rain. Although there was some cloudiness, luck was on the event organizers’ side.

Not even a slight drizzle fell as the floats inched along Session Road up to the Athletic Bowl.

But as the "Parade of Floats" basked in the good weather, a storm of criticisms against the organizers and the city government over Saturday’s incident threatened to sap this year’s Panagbenga of its success.

For lawyer Mia Cawed, risking the health of participating schoolchildren who had to proceed with their dance routines while heavily drenched, smacked of child abuse.

"I hold them, especially Mayor Bernardo Vergara, responsible," said Cawed, president of the Lady Lawyers League of the Philippines’ Baguio-Benguet chapter.

M/Sgt. Pablo Ponseca, of the Army Reserve Command’s 106th Civil Defense Center, said they brought at least 50 children to their emergency medical station at Burnham Park.

"They were all suffering from ‘beginning hypothermia," he said, adding that it would have been a wise move to postpone the street dancing parade because of the heavy downpour.

A tourism official, who asked not to be identified, said organizers had been warned about possible bad weather and that had the parade started at noon as originally planned and not 2 p.m., "that could have saved us."

Vergara, however, insisted that no one should be blamed for what he described was an "unfortunate" incident.