Isabela gov, mayors meet on jueteng; newsmen barred

ILAGAN, Isabela — Gov. Grace Padaca met with 18 of the 36 Isabela mayors late Friday afternoon and discussed "sensitive matters," including jueteng.

Newsmen, including the correspondents of Manila-based dailies, were thrown out of the conference room of the MARJS Hotel here before the closed-door, "no holds barred" meeting started.

Jonas Lamorena, provincial legal officer, demanded that the mediamen, who had been tipped off about the meeting, to leave the premises, saying that "sensitive matters" on security would be tackled.

Asked what issues would be discussed, Lamorena admitted that jueteng was one of the "utmost concerns."

However, no police or military official was around for the meeting.

Alicia Mayor Pol Dy, president of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines’ provincial chapter, bewailed the move to bar the mediamen from covering the meeting.

"That should not be. Are they hiding something about the meeting?" Dy, younger brother of former governor Faustino Dy Jr., said in Tagalog.

Nevertheless, Dy scored what he described as the "hit-and-miss" approach of the provincial government against jueteng.

Three mayors — Isidro Siquian (Benito Soliven), Benedict Calderon (Roxas) and Reynaldo Abesamis (San Manuel) — walked out shortly after the meeting began, describing the affair as a "meeting behind the curtain of hypocrisy."

Siquian, vice president of the LMP provincial chapter, said, "I don’t think there will be any productive results."

"Is there a need for the LMP to adopt a stand on a matter that is illegal?" he asked in the vernacular.

For his part, Mayor Eduardo Cabantac of Quezon town, a lawyer himself, described the meeting as a "personal proceeding," but refused to elaborate.

A police escort of a mayor-ally of Padaca jokingly said that the matters discussed in the meeting did not in any way involve "national security," but "personal prosperity."

Another mayor, who requested anonymity, said after emerging from the meeting that the provincial government’s anti-jueteng drive was just a "moro-moro."