DAGUPAN CITY – Original families who settled in Dagupan have bonded themselves in order to build the Capilla de San Juan de Evangelista costing more than P8 million just beside the St. John Metropolitan Cathedral.

Former House Speaker Jose de Venecia, Jr., congressman of the fourth district of Pangasinan, led the ground-breaking rites for the  project, attended by descendants of the original families who made Dagupan their home.

De Venecia, whose family was among the original families who came to Dagupan, then a prosperous municipality of Pangasinan, initially contributed P50,000 of his P1 million pledge for the project.

Those who were not able to attend were the descendants of the Filipino-Chinese settlers Jimmy Fernandez and Mariano Lim and others, among the original families that came to Dagupan.

Dr. Aurora Samson Reyna of the University of Luzon said the Capilla San Juan de Evangelista will be a house that will symbolize the passage of one life to another life.

Dr. Gregoria Villaflor, prime mover of the project, confirmed that the chapel will be built with the help of the heirs of the original families who came to the city.

The ground-breaking rite was attended by Monsignor Rafael Magno and Fr. Manuel de los Santos, parochial vicar. (PNA)

City administrator Alvin Fernandez congratulates Mrs. Membla S. Kang who romped off with the Mrs. Buntis Day 2008 beauty pageant title organized by the Philippine Obstetrical and Gynecological Society (Foundation) Inc. at the CSI Stadia.(CIO photo by Mitz Cresencio)

DAGUPAN CITY – A motorcade, exhibits, symposium and free clinic marked the 5^th national celebration here of the “Araw ng mga Buntis” (Pregnant Women Day) as provided for in Executive Order No. 569 issued by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on March 9, 2004.

Dr. Ma. Corazon Gamilla, president of the Philippine Obstetrical and Gynecological Society (Foundation) (POGS), led the observance which was aimed at bringing due recognition to all pregnant women who are considered as heroes in their own rights by bringing another life into the world.

Ever since Proclamation No. 569 was issued, celebrations of the National Pregnant Women Day were held earlier in various cities in the Philippines yearly.

Dagupan City Administrator welcomed POGS officers and members throughout the country who converged at the CSI Stadia and Jimmy L. Fernandez Center here for the one-day event.

He also ordered all barangay captains to fetch all pregnant women from the city’s 31 barangays to undergo free clinics undertaken by well-known obstetricians and gynecologists throughout the country. Read more

DAGUPAN CITY – The Second Highway Engineering District has assured that the ongoing upgrading of 650-meter portion of the Dagupan-Binmaley-Lingayen road in barangay Tapuac here will be completed before the rainy season.

Rodolfo Dion, second highway district engineer, said the portion of the road, which is flood-prone, is now being elevated by 70 meters.

Costing P20 million, the project will even be finished before the city’s Bangus Festival slated sometime in April this year, he said.

The Bangus Festival is expected to draw a banner crowd that will come not only from Pangasinan but also from the whole region.

A drainage system was constructed ahead of the elevation work on the road way.

With the construction work now in full blast, the roadway has been declared for one-way traffic yet till March 15 when it will be totally closed. (PNA)

SAN CARLOS CITY, Pangasinan – The family of the late Mayor Julian Resuello was extremely disappointed over the still unresolved slaying of the Resuello patriarch almost 11 months ago.

Julier Resuello, who succeeded his father as mayor of San Carlos City, said the gunman, identified as Cesar de Guzman, alias “Cabesa”, including the mastermind, are still at large despite the efforts of the Philippine National Police.

The elder Resuello was gunned down inside a jampacked auditorium on April 28 last year and died two days later at the St. Luke’s Medical Center in Manila.

Police Provincial Director Isagani Nerez confirmed that operatives tasked to track down de Guzman in various parts of the country returned home empty handed.

So far, P2 million was already made available to any person who can furnish the police any information that could lead to the arrest and prosecution of the suspect.

Only Angelito Soriano, a native of Malasiqui, had so far been arrested and is now being tried for double murder and multiple frustrated murder before the Regional Trial Court.

But Cabesa is the more important one because he holds the key that could unlock the mastermind.

Nerez said the manhunt against de Guzman by elements of the Task Force Resuello is still continuing. (PNA)  

DAGUPAN CITY – Congressman Jose de Venecia, Jr. of the fourth district of Pangasinan, has defended the Joint Seismic Marine Undertaking (JSMU) on the Spratlys among the Philippines, China and Vietnam signed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the Philippines.

“The agreement was very good and I could praise President Arroyo for that,” De Venecia said in a talk to newsmen shortly after the groundbreaking rites on the proposed Capilla San Juan de Evangelista here.

But he added that Arroyo and Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo must reveal all the signed documents regarding the Spratlys before the people.

“All these documents should be revealed to the Filipino people,” De Venecia told newsmen.

He said that he is in favor of this agreement because it is now about time to convert the Spratlys in the South China Sea into a zone of peace and development, instead of a zone for war.

He said this will avoid war over the Spratlys between China and the Philippines and between China and Vietnam. Read more

VIGAN CITY, Ilocos Sur – Ilocos Sur Governor Deogracias Victor Savellano asked the newly assumed police regional director to look into the investigation of previous violent incidents perpetrated in the province in the past.

According to the governor, he made his request to new police regional director Chief Superintendent Romeo Hilomen during the latter’s courtesy call at the provincial capitol on Thursday.

He said that the occurrence of some crimes involving firearms and deadly weapons will tarnish the image of the province, being the most peaceful local government unit (LGU) in Ilocos Region today.

“We will not tolerate the occurrence of crimes in the province because this will destroy our present image in the region as well in the country and at the same time, our different tourism and investment development programs will also be affected,” he said. Read more

Ms. Gina de Venecia, wife of former Speaker Jose De Venecia, Jr.,  was one of the speakers at a program staged at Plaza Miranda in Quiapo, Manila on Saturday during a rally to commemorate the International Women’s Day. She told the crowd of the time when as a friend she tried advising President Gloria Arroyo about ongoing corruption in her government, but only to be told, “Gina, I’m the president; you’re just a housewife.” (PDN  PHOTO  BY  ERIC  ISAAC)

Celebration of the International Women’s Day staged at Plaza Miranda in Quiapo, Manila last Saturday made quite a twist in itself when women from militant groups denounced their peer: President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

There was obviously an irony there when, in celebration of their womanhood, these women denounced a fellow woman. Such act underscores the point that womanhood is celebrated not merely by the fact that one is a woman. It also denotes that womanhood is not simply gender classification; it goes beyond being in the female class.

“We are the women men warned us about.

We are the women who know that all issues are ours, who will reclaim our wisdom, reinvent our tomorrow, question and redefine everything, including power.

We have worked now for decades to name the details of our need, rage, hope, vision. We are weary of listing refrains on our suffering-to-entertain or be simply ignored. We are down with vague words and real waiting: famishing for action, dignity, joy. We intend to do more than merely endure and survive.

They have tried to deny us, define us, defuse us, denounce us; to jail, enslave, exile, gas, rape, beat, burn, bury-and bore us. Yet nothing, not even the offer to save their failed system, can grasp us.
For thousands of years, women have had responsibility without power-while men have had power without responsibility. We offer those men who risk being brothers a balance, a future, a hand. But with or without them, we will go on.

For we are the Old Ones, the New Breed, the Natives who came first but lasted, indigenous to an utterly different dimension. We are the girl child in Zambia, the grandmother in Burma, the woman in El Salvador and Afghanistan, Finland and Fiji. We are whole-song and rainforest; the depth-wave rising huge to shatter glass power on the shore; the lost and despised who, weeping, stagger into the light.

All this we are. We are intensity, energy, the people speaking—who no longer will wait and who cannot on our tongues.

….We are the women who will transform the world.”

THIS month (March) is women’s month. In keeping with the significance of the season, I would like to focus our attention on a woman leader of Pangasinan who has been overlooked by local historians.

I am referring to Binari Kabontatala.

This probably is the first time you will come across the word binari. I, myself, coined this word. Literally, it means biin ari, which I would like to mean princesa. (Kabontatala was the daughter of the anak banwa of Domalandan).

Princesa, however, is Spanish. So it is incumbent upon us to coin a new word which would sound native. Binari in English means woman ruler.

Who is Binari Kabontatala, and what was her role in Pangasinan history? Read more

THE BIBLICAL reference to Pangasinan being the place where the “salt of the earth” is found, is turning truer as time passes. The meaning of Pangasinan or “the place where salt is made” is derived from the salt harvested from its earth, which is known all over the country for its extraordinary quality.

Every so often, the allegory refers to the quality of its people, attributing the quality of her salt to her people alleging that the consistent use of this excellent salt to their diet contributes to theirextraordinary intelligence, their natural patriotism and heroism, and their pursuit of excellence in whichever field they find themselves in. Here in the land of salt, extraordinary leaders are born and bred, claims only that the salt, a gift from God to the people of the province, makes them so.

While the above claim maybe conjured to be purely more poetic, more and more of the medicinal properties or iodine in natural salt in the right amounts especially for the mental development of babies of pregnant women become relevant. We seriously take a second look at Pangasinan’s salt and wonder aloud, if indeed, we have taken this extraordinary gift which doubly underlines the quality of its people too, as first claimed. As they say in the expression, it is worth “putting your money where your mouth is”. Does it stand close scrutiny and pass the test? Is it scientifically founded? Is the quality truly rare and indigenous to the salt harvested in Pangasinan, and therefore worth marketing? Indeed, it is not only pure poetry, or even pure talk, to say with impunity, that “Yes, indeed, Pangasinan’s salt is all of the above.” Read more