The 29th Sinulog Festival: A stunning success!

I was supposed to give you a report on our Sinulog weekend, but due to deadline problems, I opted to make an advance column so I could really give you a complete report on what happened during the fiesta of Cebu. There is no doubt that the 29th Sinulog Festival was a total and complete success, where no major untoward incidents were reported. Best of all, despite the worsening weather that gave Cebu cloudy skies for the entire week, the sun finally appeared on the Sinulog parade itself… although later in the afternoon, there were scattered showers, but that didn’t dampen the crowd.

For 29 years now, I have always watched the Sinulog, which had its humble beginnings during the time of then Cebu City Mayor Florentino Solon. The Sinulog Festival was organized by then Cebu Customs collector David Odilao and the parade was concentrated only on the streets surrounding the Sto. Niño Basilica. It was the 80s and no one even thought that the Sinulog would grow to such heights and become extremely popular; it is dubbed as the country’s number one tourist drawer of all time!

Months back, everyone thought that finally, we would be seeing the end of the Sinulog festivities, thanks to the bureaucracy of the Commission on Audit (COA) that suddenly put in question whether public funds should be given to a private non-profit organization, the Sinulog Foundation Inc. This is where the City of Cebu and everyone who wants to sponsor something for the Sinulog Festival would give their money to, so the Sinulog Foundation would be able to hold its annual event. In all its 29 years, this was the only time when the Sinulog Festival was threatened with extinction and it had to come from COA, 29 years after having this celebration!

The other “threat” to the success of the Sinulog Festival was more plausible because pundits were saying that because of the global recession, there would be fewer foreign tourists coming to Cebu for the Sinulog and local or domestic tourists, too. Of course, no one would dare question this prediction; after all there is a global recession happening all over the world. But then, the pundits were proven wrong when official reports say that 2.1 million people attended the Sinulog weekend.

We’ve seen all the features of the Sinulog Festival, from all angles, including even just watching the festivities from my office television. However, this year, SkyCable came up with the idea of having a live telecast of the Sinulog Grand Parade on www.sinulogsasky.com and indeed, I checked this out and voila, you could see the full coverage on your computer anywhere in the world where you have Internet access.

I also asked myself what I haven’t done during the Sinulog. Actually the only thing I haven’t done during the Sinulog Festival was ride on a helicopter. Indeed, if you want to get a quick roundabout tour over the entire Sinulog parade route, the best way is via a helicopter, which FM station Y-101 and Globe Telecom have been doing for years. So I called my good friend Councilor Sylvan “Jak’d Wak” Jakosalem, general manager of Y-101, and made arrangements for the flight.

By noon of Sunday, I went to the Ayala Business Park where Y-101 set up its heliport where two helicopters, a Robinson R-44 and an Aerospatiale Ecureuil of Opulent Air piloted by my good friend Capt. Leo Dimaala, were ready to go. We took off with Jak Jakosalem on the Ecureuil in order to airdrop flowers and confetti on the parade participants below.

When the chopper took off from the Ayala Business Park landing site, we were almost instantly over Mango Avenue, one of the main streets where huge crowds were expected. Capt. Dimaala banked the chopper over the Fuente Osmeña so low I swear we could have touched the Lhuillier Christmas Tree. Then we flew along Osmeña Boulevard and swung right toward the Cebu City Sports Center Grandstand where all the parade participants would dance before the judges. A quick turnaround brought us over the University of San Carlos (USC) main building and down to M. J. Cuenco Avenue and back to Mango Avenue for another quick turn around Fuente, then back to base. With the success of the 29th Sinulog Festival, we can expect a bigger success for the 30th Sinulog celebration, which will be at the height of the 2010 elections.

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Our heartfelt condolences to the family of Atty. Oscar de Leon, 88, former regional director of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in Region 7 from 1976 to 1981. He’s the father-in-law of my brother Bing Avila. He was a world-class pistol shooter who trained the top shooters of today. His wake is at the Funeraria Paz in Sucat, Parañaque and burial will be on Saturday at the Manila Memorial Park, also in Sucat. May we request pious readers to please pray for the repose of his soul.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.