Cabanatuan City residents express in a rally last Saturday their sentiments about the thrice postponed plebiscite for the ratification of the highly-urbanizing status of their city.
The last Comelec-scheduled plebiscite was January 25 but was stopped by the Supreme Court upon petition of Nueva Ecija Gov. Aurelio Umali.
PHOTO BY ELMO ROQUE
CABANATUAN CITY – Thousands of voters here held a rally Saturday expressing their sentiments for authorities
concerned to let the plebiscite for the ratifi cation of the highly-urbanized status of this city to push through without any more legal impediment.
Displaying placards, one of them saying “Yes or No, ituloy ang plebiscito”, the rally participants massed at Plaza Lucero here and listened to impassioned speeches requesting authorities concerned to allow the plebiscite here to attain its full completion. Police sources said the participants numbered about 3,500 to 4,000.
Thousands more watched the happenings at the rally through a cable TV channel coverage here. The rally was held on the day scheduled by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for the holding of the plebiscite but was
stopped by the Supreme Court In its resolution earlier, the Comelec indicated that only registered voters of Cabanatuan City will be allowed to take part in the January 25 plebiscite.
The Supreme Court, however, issued a temporary restraining order last January 14 stopping the holding of the plebiscite. The SC ruling was issued in response to a petition of Nueva Ecija Gov. Aurelio Umali in which he insisted that the entire province should participate in the elections, not only residents of Cabanatuan.
The governor argued that the province will be affected once Cabanatuan City becomes an HUC. Under the Local Government Code, once a city becomes an HUC, its registered voters will no longer elect officials of the provincial government.
It also said the provincial government will have no administrative supervision over the HUC and its elected officials. It will be recalled that President Aquino issued on July 4, 2012 Presidential Proclamation 418 converting Cabanatuan City into an HUC. The conversion, though, has to be ratified in a plebiscite at a date to be set by the Comelec.
Previous to the January 25 scheduled plebiscite, the Comelec attempted to hold the plebiscite on two occasions but each was shut down by legal blocks. One of them was a TRO issued by a regional trial court and another by the Comelec itself which ruled that it should be held until after the elections last year.
Mayor Julius Cesar Vergara petitioned the Comelec to set anew another date for the plebiscite saying the elections were over and that no TRO has been issued by the court to stop it. Eleven days before the plebiscite date, the SC issued the ruling stopping it until further notice.
“This rally was a people’s initiative,” said Jose Roy Balagtas, city administrator, when sought to give light to the Saturday rally. He said that from what he understood from those who sought permission to hold the rally, the voters here just wanted for the plebiscite to push through, that only the voters will participate in the plebiscite, and they just wish the voters to express their preference in the ballot.
Balagtas said that the lawyers of Mayor Vergara have already filed their motion before the Supreme Court for the lifting of the TRO.
He also said that the mayor has already written letters to civic leaders here indicating that he was placing his campaign for a “yes” vote at the back seat and instead wishing for the plebiscite to push through as soon as possible and that only Cabanatuenos have the right to decide for themselves on the issues that pertain to Cabanatuan City alone.
