Bacolod Rep. Anthony Golez Jr. was the first candidate to file his certificate of candidacy before the Commission on Election in Bacolod City yesterday.

Golez, who ran under the Nationalist People’s Coalition-Grupo Progreso last year with Mayor Evelio Leonardia and Vice Mayor Jude Thaddeus Sayson, said he is running for re-election as an independent candidate.

He will be running against Leonardia, who is ending his three-year term as mayor of Bacolod next year.

Golez was accompanied by his father Rolando Golez Sr., his mother, Gloria, brothers Norman and Alexis, and his uncles, when he filed his COC before COMELEC Registrar Mavil Majarucon-Sia.

He signed his COC before his lawyer Gulliermo Tejida lll at the Negros Press Club yesterday.

In a press conference Golez said "I have taken a bold step to be the first to file my COC today.”

He claimed that the past weeks up to the wee hours last night, his detractors have been trying to desperately demoralize, confuse, marginalize him using the dirtiest tactics, even “intrigue” his friend former councilor Lyndon Cana to run against him, used his private life, all hoping that he will withdraw from the race, Golez said.

“But they failed to break my spirit, my being a dungganon, my vows to Bacolodnons,’” he said.

Golez said he sees this election not as a contest of power, but the best of their dignity, humility and faith in the Lord.

He said he has an Ombudsman clearance which simply tells everybody that he not a thief.

Golez said he is challenging those who will run against him to show the same documents before filing. He claimed that he has an outstanding track record as a public servant and has filed more than 200 bills in Congress, have brought billions of pesos worth of infrastructures never done and seen before, so he was honored as the Most Outstanding Congressman in 2011. He did not, however, say, who granted the honor.

"I will deliver our city and people from the bondage of thievery, mafianomics, illegal transactions, oppression of the poor and the helpless…. gangsterism and moral degeneration,” he claimed.

Golez said he may not have a perfect family life but he is not a thief. Bacolod deserves clean and honest public servants, he said.

Leonardia said “That is cheap gimmickry tantamount to nothing. It could even mean that if he has a clearance from the Ombudsman, he has not done anything at all.”

He said that in the last elections, he was even the one revealing to the public these cases filed against him before the Ombudsman and Golez was there in the campaign, and that inspite of that, Golez forced himself to join the group.

But these cases were denied by the Ombudsman and were all dismissed and the people are aware that these were all harassment cases. That is why he kept winning the elections because people understand, Leonardia said.

“If Golez says he is not a thief, we should ask the Senators if that is true,” Leonardia said.

Golez claimed that he was adopted by Grupo Progreso in 2009 during the campaign and that he was used to help his partymates clean their names and after they won the elections, they threw him out, all for a vested interest that a party mate will run.

“I was kicked out from the local NPC, but I will not resign from the party. I will run as independent but still an NPC in my heart,” he said.

Leonardia said the problem with Golez is that until now he is still hallucinating.

If he were to rate his winnability from 1 - 10, Golez said he will base his answer on his strength and not based on his opponents' weakness.*CGS

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