LAPU-LAPU City Mayor Junard “Ahong” Chan also wants to rename his city based on the correct spelling of the country’s first hero.
Chan made the pronouncement just after President Rodrigo Duterte signed Executive Order (EO) 152, correcting that Lapulapu’s name should be spelled “Lapulapu,” not “Lapu-Lapu.” But the EO only refers to the hero and the city is exempted from the name correction.
Chan, however, wants to use Duterte’s new order to correct the city’s name.
“The President, since before, had always wanted LapuLapu not to be the same with the fish or escabeche (sweet and sour fish dish),” Chan told reporters on Tuesday, December 7, 2021.
Chan also urged members of the Lapu-Lapu City Council to issue a resolution calling on Congress to correct their city’s name based on Duterte’s new EO.
Chan also thanked Duterte for continuing to promote Lapulapu to the entire country.
Last January, on of the 99th day countdown to the 500th anniversary of the “Victory at Mactan,” the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, in cooperation with the National Quincentennial Committee, launched the P5,000 commemorative banknote and medal with Lapulapu’s face on it.
Duterte said, in his EO 152, adopting a common rendering of the name of Lapulapu, so as to conform to earlier references, “will aid in the education of our youth about Philippines history, which is foundational to the formation of national identity.”
The EO amended all references to the name Lapu-Lapu in EO 17 (series of 2017) and 55 (series of 2018). The name will now be written as Lapulapu.