Bacolod Councilor Caesar Distrito yesterday said they will file a resolution requesting the House of Representatives to join the Sanggunian in sponsoring a bill that will amend R.A. 772 if Bacolod Rep. Anthony Golez Jr. will not author one.

Golez delivered a privilege speech in Congress last week where he asked for an inquiry on what he called a violation of the rule of law, that he claimed was perpetrated by city officials in the celebration of the Charter Day of Bacolod last year.

He claimed that last year, city officials spent public funds for the celebration of a charter day in June, contrary to the mandate of R.A. 7724 or an Act declaring October 19 of every year as a special non-working public holiday in Bacolod City.

Distrito said this is a local issue that could have been resolved locally and not brought to the national limelight.

Mayor Evelio Leonardia said R.A. 7724 is not to declare October 19 as a charter day but as a special non working holiday.

Golez does not understand what is happening in Bacolod since he is not from here, he said.

Leonardia said Ramon Ricardo Roque, deputy secretary general of the House of Representatives, had only furnished them a copy of Commonwealth Act No. 325 that created the City of Bacolod on June 18, 1938.

In his Congress speech, Golez said that the city officials claimed that Roque had issued a certification that it is legal to celebrate Bacolod’s charter day on June 18, and that Roque had later denied it.

Leonardia said the Public Information Office has not issued press releases that the House of Representatives had certified that the charter day should be celebrated in June, as claimed by Golez.

He said Golez attacked Roque on the wrong assumption.

It was never their intention to condition the minds of the people but they only want to tell them the truth that the charter day of Bacolod was signed by President Manuel L. Quezon on June 18, Leonardia said.

They only want the rule of law upheld, he added.

Councilor Em Legaspi-Ang said that, aside from passing an ordinance declaring the commemoration of the charter day to be officially on June 18, they also unanimously passed last week a resolution requesting President Benigno Aquino lll to declare June 18 as a special non-working holiday in the meantime that they are waiting for Congress to correct the fact that the charter day of Bacolod is on June 18 and not October 19.

Distrito said they are not going against the law but everything they are doing is in preparation for the law to be amended, although this may take time.

He said they are only moving the celebration from October 19 to June 18 and there is no waste of government funds since there is only one celebration.

Distrito said transferring the date is not illegal since this was also being done by the former boss of Golez’s, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, when there was yet no law on holiday economics.

As long as there is no double celebration, there is no violation of the law, he said.*CGS

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