No session today at Talisay council

CEBU, Philippines – There will be no regular session today as majority of the Talisay City Councilors are in Manila for a three-day seminar on gender and finance. The event which will be held at the Manila Hotel is hosted by the Asian Women's Network on Gender and Development or AWNGAD.

Almost all those who are attending had opposed the passage of the Gender and Development (GAD) Code ordinance filed by then former City Councilor Shirley Belleza last March.

Belleza filed again her proposed ordinance again in April but her fellow administration councilors refused to tackle it, and then stripped Belleza of her committee chairmanship.

Belleza held three committees of which Family, Children and Women was among them. The 11-member 3rd Sangguniang Panlungsod including presiding officer and Vice Mayor Alan Bucao around that time were all from the administration, most of whom were focused on their reelection bids, except for Belleza, who was on her third and last term.

They repeatedly denied Belleza's appeal to approve her ordinance, which she said would be her gift to the women before she left. 

This irked some 3,000 members of the Talisay City Women's Federation, then headed by Belleza.

The council's point was for them to be given enough time to study the proposal. But according to Belleza, she first filed it last year but was deferred, and then filed it again on March.

It was presumed that the shelving of Belleza's proposals was done on purpose to prevent her from looking good to her constituents considering that her husband, Aberdovey Belleza, was running for vice mayor against Alan Bucao.

Aberdovey lost to Bucao by a large margin of votes.

However, despite the council's alleged "anti-women" reaction to the GAD Code, as described by Belleza earlier, the city was still able to get, for the second time, the most-gender responsive LGU award from the province, besting all component cities in Cebu. (THE FREEMAN)