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Bencyrus Ellorin .

I WILL write about politics, anyway.

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I was thinking of a good fiesta, celebratory piece in time for fiesta week.

Cagayan de Oro, celebrating the Feast of St Augustine, is felt much. Its secular version, the Higalaay Festivalm is already in full swing until bells of the Saint Augustine Cathedral ring in celebration on the 28th of August.

I did not pay much attention to the Higalaay Festival events until this weekend when I felt left out, out of the loop, depressed, not paying attention to the Ely Buendia and True Faith concert, until I saw friends flashing their tickets on social media before the concert last Saturday.

If celebration means enjoying the fruits of hardwork, City Hall has reasons to celebrate.

Mayor Oscar S. Moreno is smiling because of both political wins and the City Hall bureaucracy getting big affirmation from award bodies.

The Liga ng mga Barangay, doning the violet color, is finally history. So with the SK Federation. Both have ex officio seats in the City Council.

Yan Lam Lim, popularly known Alam Lim  of Barangay 40, has finally decided to abandon the violet camp and join Mayor Moreno. Now, the ABC or Liga ng mga Barangay is a “kaabag.” SK Federation president John Michael Seno of Barangay 32, also a kaabag is now a kaabag at the City Council.

There truly is a super majority in the City Council, leaving, “who” in the opposition?

Then last week, Cagayan de Oro came out with flying colors with the No. 5 ranking in the highly urbanized cities in the national competitiveness contest of the Department of Trade and  Industry. In that contest where local governments are ranked in terms of competitiveness pillars of resiliency, infrastructure, government efficiency and economic dynamism, the city ranked first in resiliency.

Then, the Galing Pook made field validation of the city’s entry in the 2018 awards. The city’s entry: No Vote, Ibot, no more!

The entry is about the emancipation of piso-piso lot beneficiaries, through the process of giving land titles to their homelots.

Social activist Ed dela Torre said the program of Mayor Moreno to give land titles to urban poor communities is bold. It did emancipate the urban poor communities not just from the previous demigod of the city, but from Mayor Moreno himself.

Emancipated urban poor communities have many stories of how they were coerced into voting for the “violets” because they fear they would evicted, demolished, displaced if they refused. One of the beneficiaries shared that they were used as political pawns, hakot rally participants. One admitted they were “hakot crowd” at the violet’s Court of Appeals rallies to protest the decision of the appellate court in the Ajinomoto case.

With the people have land titles to their homelots, their “citizenry” has become complete, said dela Torre who went on to say that the suffrage before was limited to landowners and men. Later on, it was expanded to include women and non-landowners. But despite this, the feudal control over non-landowners by those in power remained. Their votes were not borne out of free decision.

Now, with you secure in your homelots, with those land titles, yung boto ninyo ay sarili n’yo nang decision. It even freed you from Mayor Moreno himself, said the activist former priest.

The fat lady has not yet sang in the 2018 Galing Pook awards, but this year’s entry, with or without an award, has already made it impact on urban poor communities. And if the city is lucky enough,it would be two-peat in the “Oscars” of Philippine local governance. Last year’s entry, “Rising up from Mud,” or how the city rose from “Sendong” won the city the Galing Pook Award.

But Mayor Moreno is not resting on the laurels of his administration. “I would be the first to say there are still a lot of inefficiencies.”

He however emphasized that whatever accolade the City Hall gets is a result of a lot of hard work.

Retired Col. Verneer Monsanto, overseer of the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Department, said the city winning 1st in the resiliency category of the competitiveness contest is not written in stone. “It is a continuing journey. Now we won because of our journey from ‘Sendong’ when over 600 Cagayanons perished to ‘Vinta’ where no one died,” he said. And from here, we continue with our journey to keep the people of Cagayan de Oro safe and secure.

Mayor Moreno dedicated the resiliency award in honor of the victims of Sendong.

There truly are a lot of reasons to celebrate, as there are a lot of work needed to make the city more livable.

For those who were saying in 2013, “tulo raman na sila ka pista,” what now?  And there will be many more fiesta to celebrate, and with the right reasons.

Happy fiesta, Cagayan!

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