Vizcaya gets woman gov, too

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya — She may not be as phenomenal as Grace Padaca, the polio victim who trounced the long-reigning Dy clan to become Isabela governor.

But Maria Luisa Lloren-Cuaresma also lived an equally interesting real-life drama leading to her ascension to this province’s top post.

From a plain housewife, the 50-year-old Cuaresma took the helm of the provincial leadership on June 30, making her the fifth woman to assume the governorship of this northeastern Cagayan Valley province.

A pharmacist by profession, Cuaresma (LDP-independent) won over her two male rivals — then incumbent board member Leonardo Perez Jr. (NPC-KNP) and human rights lawyer Ernesto Salunat (Lakas-CMD). She got 56,008 votes against Perez’s 53,062 and Salunat’s 32,062.

Defeating Salunat, one of the most-sought-after trial lawyers here and a former governor of the Northern Luzon Integrated Bar of the Philippines, was already a political feat. Moreso, she trounced Perez, son of this province’s former long-time political kingpin, Leonardo Perez Sr., who once served as congressman, senator and chairman of the Commission on Elections.

Actually, Cuaresma was likened to Corazon Aquino who rose to power as the country’s first woman President after the EDSA Revolution in 1986.

Like Mrs. Aquino, Cuaresma found herself in politics when her husband, then incumbent Bambang town mayor Benjamin Cuaresma Jr., was abducted and tortured to death at the height of the communist insurgency here in 1987.

Her husband’s gruesome killing generated public outrage, transforming the crying widow into a symbol of the anti-communist crusade here. The armed men who abducted and tortured the late mayor claimed to be members of the New People’s Army.

Bowing to public clamor and with her four children as driving force, Cuaresma decided to enter politics and continue her late husband’s unfinished tasks for Bambang town.

As expected, she won the mayoralty race in 1987 and went on to hold the post for three consecutive terms.

The transformation of Bambang from obscurity to one of the province’s three premier towns under Cuaresma’s leadership served as one of her credentials to win the vice gubernatorial race in 1998, defeating then incumbent governor Natalia Dumlao, wife of the late former long-time governor and political kingpin Patricio Dumlao Sr.

Cuaresma was overwhelmingly re-elected vice governor in 2001, defeating John Severino Bagasao, three-term mayor of this capital town.

Bagasao, a distant relative of Cuaresma, reclaimed the Bayombong mayorship in the recent elections.

With Gov. Rodolfo Agbayani completing his three consecutive terms, Cuaresma seized the opportunity — and subsequently became the fifth woman to assume the Nueva Vizcaya governorship after Corazon Espino, Natalia Dumlao, Betty Calderon and Ruth Padilla.