Tuguegarao City, a Ting stronghold, has new mayor

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya , Philippines   â€“ Tuguegarao City in Cagayan, which the Ting family politically dominated for more than two decades, has a new mayor in former police general Jefferson Soriano.    

Soriano, who ran under the Nationalist People’s Alliance, won by a slim margin of 1,132 over re-electionist Mayor Delfin Ting.

“The hotly contested race was the first ever in the history of Tuguegarao,” said Benjie de Yro of the Tuguegarao-based regional office of the Philippine Information Agency.

A Filipino-Chinese clan, the Tings, led by the family’s patriarch, Delfin Ting, and son, now congressman Randolph Ting, had held Tuguegarao’s top post for 25 years or since the elder Ting trounced then incumbent mayor Florentino Fermin in 1988.

A former deputy director general of the Philippine National Police, Soriano is a holder of a United Nations-sponsored Doctorate Degree in Peace and Security Administration.

Ting’s son, however, was re-elected representative of Cagayan’s third congressional district, beating businessman Raymund Guzman by a wide margin. The Tings belong to the National Unity Party.

Soriano, a member of the Magilas Class of 1976 of the Philippine Military Academy, where former PNP chief Jesus Versoza also belongs, once served as police director of Cagayan Valley.

“I will give Tuguegarao residents the best service I can,” Soriano said after his proclamation last Tuesday.

The home of the Ibanag indigenous tribe, Tuguegarao, some 400 kilometers north of Manila, is the regional government center.