Monday, October 06, 2008 Signature campaign kicks off
A SIGNATURE campaign was launched yesterday at the Alliance of Two Hearts Parish in Banawa, Guadalupe, Cebu City to support House Bill 5234, which seeks to create “Barangay Banawa Englis.”
Residents of the two sitios will also send Guadalupe barangay officials a letter asking them to pass a resolution expressing support to the subdivision of Guadalupe.
A 2002 barangay resolution questioning the boundary delineation set by City Ordinance 1661 eventually led the Commission Elections (Comelec) to indefinitely postpone the holding of a plebiscite.
Ordinance 1661, or the “ordinance dividing Barangay Guadalupe, defining and delineating the boundaries of the subdivision, setting up and providing resources and assistance to the emerging new barangay on its initial corporate existence,” was approved by the City Council last Dec. 18, 1996 yet.
Jaime Sala, vice president of the United Banawa Englis Association Inc. (formerly Banawa Separation Movement), said the signature campaign is meant to support the bill that Rep. Antonio Cuenco (Cebu City, south) filed last Tuesday.
Cuenco filed House Bill 5234, or “An Act Creating Barangay Banawa Englis in the City of Cebu,” after the City Council failed to set the plebiscite for Ordinance 1661.
He, however, still prefers that the creation of Barangay Banawa Englis be done through the City Council, since doing so through national legislation takes so long.
8,000 signatures
Yesterday, Sala said they intend to collect 8,000 signatures of all registered voters in the barangay.
Gathering signatures from mass-goers yesterday, he said they had at least 5,000, but could not tell if all were that of Guadalupe voters.
This week, the group will visit each of Guadalupe’s sitios to gather the target number of signatures.
On the other hand, Guadalupe Barangay Captain Eugenio Faelnar said he and the other barangay officials had always expressed their support for the separation of Banawa and Englis, which is composed of 57 puroks, from Guadalupe.
He said, though, that there may not be a need for a barangay resolution formally expressing such support because there is already Ordinance 1661, which was approved over a decade ago.
All that needs to be done, he said, is the holding of a plebiscite to determine if majority of the residents support the move.
In the bill’s explanatory note, Cuenco said Banawa Englis residents have been “strongly and consistently clamoring to convert their place into a full-pledged barangay” for the past 15 years.
Sala had said that though a few of the original leaders have already passed away, they will continue the fight, as Banawa and Englis have not been getting the services they expect from Guadalupe. (RHM)
