Dinagyang fever grips Iloilo City

As in Kalibo’s Ati-Atihan, Iloilo is in the grip of the Dinagyang fever this weekend. But there is tight security in the city, with Iloilo City police chief Wesley Barrayuga declaring that he has fielded 6,000 security personnel to ensure the safety of Dinagyang revelers and participants.

Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas is expecting a record number of visitors to the world-famous festival in honor of Sto. Niño. Foreign envoys and top government officials are expected to attend the weekend festivities.

Dinagyang, incidentally, drew into Iloilo some of the country’s aspiring “presidentiables.”

According to the reception committee, they included Senate President Manny Villar, and Senators Mar Roxas and Richard Gordon as well as Metro Manila Development Authority chairman Bayani Fernando.

Other notable guests included Speaker Jose de Venecia, Public Works and Highways Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane, Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza, Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno, and Tourism Secretary Ace Durano.

Adding spice to the affair are the 15 city mayors of the country who are members of the League of Cities chaired by Mayor Treñas.

The Iloilo-Bacolod ferries were crowded by Negrenses going to Iloilo to attend Dinagyang. That’s how popular the festival has become.

But while that was going on, Treñas earlier expressed concern over pranksters who phoned in two bomb threats last week. That sent police bomb experts rushing to the Avanceña Hall of the Department of Justice to verify the threats. Both turned out to be false. But, as pointed out by Treñas, police must meticulously examine the premises of a building where the alleged bombs had been placed.

But in Bacolod, there was an explosion. This time, there was no threat, just a grenade thrown at the Department of Agrarian Reform compound early Thursday morning.

The explosive dug a six-inch crater, shattered a glass window and left shrapnel holes on the glass front door of the Provincial Agrarian Reform Office (PARO).

Luckily, provincial agrarian reform officer Teresita Depenoso and her daughter were asleep inside the building and spared from harm.

They immediately called the police which, in turn, came right away, said Depenoso.

Immediately, agrarian reform beneficiaries and the DAR officials tagged landlords opposed to land reform as the culprits behind the grenade blast. There was no basis for their conclusions.

Except that the explosion occurred a few hours before the PARO and her staff and the police force went to Hacienda Carmencita in Pontevedra town and Hacienda Esperanza in La Carlota to settle the dispute among agrarian reform beneficiaries of the estate formerly owned by a firm headed by Kitchie Benedicto-Paulino, daughter of the late Philsucom chairman Roberto Benedicto.

Depenoso, along with Senior Superintendent Rosendo Franco, dialogued with the contending farmers, the members of the Workers Amalgamated Union of the Philippines (WAUP) and some 40 of its members who wanted to get out of the WAUP and demanded that they be issued CLOAS.

WAUP, headed by Ed Alfonso, brother of Pontevedra Mayor Alfonso, insisted that the DAR implement the memorandum of agreement between them and their former members, and, of course, with the hacienda owner.

The group decided to hold another dialogue yesterday to thresh out the irritants between the two contending groups. WAUP is composed of 233 members.

BREDCO has no right to sue

Bacolod folk were stunned yesterday when city legal officer Allan Zamora countered that the Bacolod Estate Development Authority no longer has the legal personality to file its case against city officials led by Mayor Evelio Leonardia and members of the Sangguniang Panlungsod who had approved the takeover ordinance.

Zamora claimed that BREDCO had assigned to Top Harbor International Inc. the right to reclaim, manage and operate the seaport. In effect, Zamora contended that BREDCO unilaterally terminated its Comprehensive Revised Reclamation Agreement that it entered into with the city.

In short, there is no longer an existing contract between BREDCO and Bacolod City because BREDCO is no longer operating the port and reclaiming the foreshore of the city.

That poses a legal question to the court. Earlier, former Vice Mayor Renecito Novero and C. Maralit filed a civil case against Leonardia and other city officials for the passage of City Ordinance No. 454 which called for the takeover of the port operations and the unfinished portion of the BREDCO reclamation project in Bacolod.

The eight others included Vice Mayor Jude Thaddeus Sayson, and Councilors Al Victor Espino, Dingo and Kevin Ramos, Homer Bais, Greg Gasatay, Celia Flor, and Roberto Rojas.

BREDCO legal luminaries earlier predicted a prolonged and bruising legal battle between BREDCO and the city government. And that also posed a threat to Bacolod’s ability to entice investors to the city should the BREDCO port close shop.

But while a lot were questioning the city’s ability to operate a port, R-II Builders chairman Regis Romero bared yesterday that he is interested in Bacolod.

“With our experience in port operations, we can convert the domestic port into an international port. There are industries that we are tied up with that we can bring here,” Romero reportedly told CREBA-Bacolod members, headed by Eddie Pestano.

R-II Builders owns and operates the Harbor Center Port Terminal, a modern port in the Manila Harbor Center.

That, to a certain extent, should send a chill up the spine of BREDCO top honcho Sammy Palanca who, last weekend, declared that he was willing to have the city buy him out with P2 billion so he could pack up and go to Silay City.

Anyway, Zamora’s legal counter, to a certain extent, added a new angle to the suit filed by Novero and company against the city officials.