Council approves resolution to re-install Tormis marker

Friday, September 10, 2010

THE Cebu City Council last Sept. 3 approved a proposed resolution by Councilor Edgardo Labella to re-install a marker on Borromeo St. where Cebu’s first post-war martyr of press freedom was slain in 1961.

This followed a request by Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC) executive director Pachico Seares to re-install the marker.

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The resolution requested the Department of Engineering and Public Works to prepare the program of works and estimates for the reinstallation of the monument dedicated to Cebu journalist Antonio Abad Tormis.

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Tormis, editor and columnist of the now defunct The Republic News, exposed government corruption and abuse. He was exposing the anomalies at the Cebu City Treasurer’s Office, particularly the overpricing of garbage cans, when he was shot on July 3, 1961, in his car parked in front of the Masonic Temple building on Borromeo St., Cebu City.

The gunman, Cesario Orongan, and the mastermind, Felipe Pareja, Cebu City treasurer at the time of Tormis’s murder, were convicted and imprisoned.

A marker was placed on the site of Tormis’s killing.

But by July 2010, the marker was gone. At least, that was when the CCPC learned that the marker had disappeared.

CCPC assistant executive director Cherry Ann Lim learned of the marker’s disappearance from Tormis’s son, Antonio Jr., whom she had contacted in connection with an exhibit on Cebu media that the CCPC was putting up at the Museo Sugbo. The exhibit soft-opened in August.

Disappointed that the Tormis family had not been informed of the marker’s removal, Antonio Jr. declined to speak further to Lim on the subject.

To learn more about the marker, Sun.Star Cebu assistant news editor Gingging Campaña called the Cultural and Historical Commission of Cebu City Hall, but it had no record of a marker built for Tormis. Neither did the Zoning Division, which keeps all records pertaining to markers, nor the City Council secretariat records section.

What the City Council secretariat had was Ordinance 570 and Resolution 1229 naming the road from P. Del Rosario Ext. passing Aznar Coliseum to the TB Pavilion after Antonio Abad Tormis, passed on July 13, 1966.

In early August, CCPC’s Seares sent a letter to Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama and Vice Mayor Joy Augustus Young, presiding officer of the Cebu City Council, informing them of the disappearance of the marker and requesting its reinstallation before Cebu Press Freedom Week, which will be celebrated on Sept. 18 to 25 this year.

Copies of the letter were sent to some members of the Cebu City Council.