INQUIRER.net Eleksyon 2007

Eastern Visayas winners include 2 widows

Visayas Bureau

Vicente Labro

TACLOBAN CITY—Winners of mayoral positions in Eastern Visayas include two women, whose politician-husbands were gunned down before the elections, and several newcomers.

Lucia Astorga, wife of slain Mayor Benito Astorga of Daram, Samar, won over two opponents in the mayoral race in that island town. It was the second time she was elected Daram mayor.

An assassin’s bullet killed her husband during a fiesta dance in Barangay Birawan in Daram on Jan. 24.

Benito had completed three consecutive terms and his wife, who won a three-year term, replaced him in 1998. He ran and won again in 2001 and 2004, and had planned to seek another term in the May 14 polls.

Lucia, a physician, had served as municipal health officer. She defeated the vice mayor of her husband, Bartolome Figueroa, and a municipal councilor, Arthur Losa.

Implicated

The National Bureau of Investigation has implicated Figueroa in the killing.

Another widow of a slain politician, Susan Parilla, a neophyte, won in the mayoral race in Naval town, the post that her husband had last sought but failed to get in 2004.

Her husband, former Biliran Gov. Danilo Parilla, 57, was shot dead while disembarking from a ship at the port of Cebu in September last year.

In Tacloban City, former Rep. Alfred Romualdez won by a wide margin over his opponent in the mayoral race. He will replace his father, Mayor Alfredo “Bejo” Romualdez.

Several newcomers also won mayoral seats in the region. Among them were Michael Cari, son of Leyte Rep. Carmen Cari (fifth district), who will soon replace his brother, Mayor Jose Carlos Cari, of Baybay, Leyte; Mayor-elect Nancy Grey of San Jorge, Samar, the wife of a losing congressional candidate in Samar’s first district; and Mayor-elect Dr. Rustico Balderian of Tabontabon, Leyte, a physician-businessman in the United States and owner of a nursing school in his hometown.

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