Her visit to Brgy. Inolingan a couple of weeks before the May 2019 elections was marred with violence, but when Mayor Ella Celestina Garcia-Yulo of Moises Padilla, Negros Occidental returned to the village recently where it was a happy affair as she came bearing gifts.
“I have been wanting to visit them for some time now to check on their welfare,” the mayor said in a statement on Thursday.
She brought 110 sacks of rice to 660 residents as Christmas giveaways from the municipal government.
During the dialogue, the residents expressed their urgent needs to the mayor especially the lack of water supply.
Garcia-Yulo said she will check if the area has a water source so that the municipal government can take the necessary steps to address their concern.
“I also encouraged them to plant trees so that they will have sufficient water source since water and trees go together,” the mayor said.
On April 25, 2019, the mayor’s brother, former Association of Barangay Captains president Jose Marcelino “Marc” Garcia, and her nephew, re-electionist councilor Jose Antonio “Michael” Garcia, were shot to death by a group of assailants while leading their convoy on the way home after a house-to-house campaign in Barangay Inolingan. She survived the ambush unscathed.
Garcia-Yulo then said: “This is the most painful and the most costly election for us. If Marc and Michael did not sacrifice their lives for us maybe I won’t be here now.”
She accused her opponent, Mayor Magdaleno Peña, of masterminding the twin killing, an allegation denied by the latter, who is a cousin of her father, the late mayor Jose Garcia.
Garcia-Yulo obtained 13,056 votes to defeat Peña, who only got 5,493 votes.
After the elections, she thanked President Rodrigo Duterte for ensuring the security of the people in her hometown, which allowed them to vote freely.
Duterte visited Moises Padilla on May 8, five days before the 2019 elections, and two days after the town was placed under the control of the Commission on Elections mainly due to poll-related violence. .
(Nanette Guadalquiver via Philippine News Agency (PNA), photo courtesy of PNA)