(Photo courtesy of the Biliran Provincial Government.)
Formal Recognition of Biliran
as a Separate, Independent and
Autonomous Regular Province
Submitted by:
Atty. Jose C.
Gonzales
Governor
Introduction
This position paper is written to solicit the endorsement and support of Pres. Corazon C. Aquino; the Honorable Members of the Philippine Senate and the House of Representatives; the Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) of Leyte; the officials and members of government and non-government organizations and institutions at national, regional, provincial, and barangay levels; and of the general citizenry, to the aspiration of the people of Biliran for their subprovince to be finally and formally recognized as a separate, independent, and autonomous regular province.
Historical Background
The island of Biliran was considered part of Leyte, geographically and politically, when Leyte was still an undivided province. It was part of Leyte’s First District under the American-sponsored Philippine Legislature. After the Philippine independence from the United States in 1946, and with the creation of Southern Leyte as a separate province and the realignment of political boundaries in later years, Biliran Island became part of Leyte’s Third Congressional District. It has remained that way when the Philippine Congress was abolished with the declaration of Martial Law by former Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos in September 1972, and until the present.
At the same time, the island of Biliran was being deliberately weaned and separated from the bigger political body that was Leyte. With the enactment of Republic Act No. 2141 in the year 1959 (see Annex “A”), the seven municipalities of Biliran Island – Almeria, Biliran, Cabucgayan, Caibiran, Culaba, and Naval – and the island municipality of Maripipi, were constituted into a subprovince of Leyte known as the Subprovince of Biliran. It provided for the position of a special board member to represent the interests of the subprovince in the provincial board of Leyte (but who has no vote except as regards to matters concerning the subprovince) and the organization of a regular highway engineering district. It also provided that, for legal and practical purposes, the Subprovince of Biliran was to be considered as a province. The then mayor of Caibiran town, Uldarico R. Reyes, was appointed by former Pres. Carlos P. Garcia as the first lieutenant-governor of the subprovince who assumed on October 25, 1959. Subsequently, the lieutenant-governor was generally elected.
Ten years later, on June 21, 1969, Republic Act No. 5977 (see Annex “B”) took effect, changing the nomenclature of “lieutenant-governor” to “governor” and provided him with all the executive powers of a provincial governor. It provided for a staff complement for a treasury office and an office of the auditor for the subprovince. Most importantly, it provided that “all funds accruing to the Subprovince of Biliran shall be expended for its exclusive benefit.”
Finally, on August 27, 1971, Republic Act No. 6415 (see Annex “C”) was passed by Congress, creating several other provincial offices and providing that appointees in said offices “shall exercise such powers and perform such duties as are vested in their respective offices by law as if the Subprovince of Biliran were a different and separate province.”
The Subprovince of Biliran had become almost a province, but for its final and formal recognition.
The first election for the position of provincial governor of Biliran was held in November 1971. It was also the last of the same exercise, until after the assumption of the Aquino administration, when the exercise was reinstated during the 1988 Local Elections – after a lapse of 17 years!
For still unspecified reasons, the Subprovince of Biliran was not allowed to hold an election for a separate provincial governor during the first local election after Martial Law in January 1980. It was virtually re-annexed to the province of Leyte, when Biliran voters were made to vote for a governor of Leyte, instead of a separate governor for Biliran as they had done once. After that exercise, the former governor of Biliran was retained in his position without popular consent.
It had seemed that the principal obstacle to Biliran becoming a full-fledged province was the population requirement (at least 200,000 persons under the old proposal). In 1980, the population of the subprovince was only about 112,000.
In a position paper submitted to some representatives in the Interim Batasang Pambansa in 1980, the former governor of Biliran, Teofilo D. Sabonsolin, argued for the waiving of the population requirement for Biliran to become a regular province, citing this as consistent with the national policy of zero population growth. He also cited the precedents such as the former subprovinces of Aurora, Camiguin, Siquijor, etc., which became regular provinces despite their lower population levels (see comparison in Annex “D”). Parenthetically, it may be mentioned that the island of Samar was divided into three provinces only in the mid-1060s, several years after Biliran was granted subprovincial status.
However, the population requirement for the creation of provinces has been honored more in the breach than in the letter of the law. This exception should have also been applied in the case of Biliran. But this did not happen.
In fact, the Subprovince of Biliran was almost automatically abolished with the approval of the Batas Pambansa Blg. 337, or the new Local Government Code, which became a law on February 10, 1983. That is, had not the former opposition leader from Cebu, Felimon Fernandez, seen the onerous provision (Section 198). Fernandez revealed that, as one of the members of the committee that cleared the provisions of the new law on local governments (they had just passed Batas Pambansa Blg. 337 then) in the rubber-stamp Interim Batasang Pambansa, he was amazed to see in the draft the original proposal to give full juridical personalities to municipal districts existing at the time while, in the same draft, subprovinces were to be deemed abolished. He thought this was unfair, and he proposed that a compromise clause must be allowed in the law. And that he got: “unless otherwise provided by law.”
Biliran Subprovince narrowly escaped virtual abolition and acquired a new lease on its existence. However, with the jacking up in the new Code of the requirements on population (at least 500,000 persons), territory (at least 3,500 square kilometers), and average estimated annual income (not less than P10-million for the last three consecutive years), the goal of eventual provincehood for Biliran (and Guimaras, the only other existing subprovince) has become very remote.
After the “people power” revolution in February 1986 and the flight of deposed Pres. Marcos to Hawaii, it had become apparent that the aspiration of the people of Biliran was extraordinarily stifled and suppressed in favor of the family business interests of the Marcoses, their relatives and friends. For instance, the sequestered 1,500-hectare Busali Stud Farms, and the cancelled agro-forestry concession totaling 14,559 hectares (or all the timberlands in the subprovince) previously granted to five companies allegedly owned by the Romualdez and Floirendo families, prove the extent of the economic intentions of the “powers-that-fled” in Biliran, even at the expense of the political development and well-being of its people.
The change of governments at the national level promised a new hope to the suppressed aspiration of the people of Biliran for their subprovince to eventually become a province.
At the local level, under the leadership of Atty. Jose C. Gonzales, who assumed his post as OIC-Governor in May 1986 (he won the local elections for Governor of Biliran in February 1988), a “Separate Province of Biliran” Movement was launched towards the end of 1986. The movement was essentially a signature campaign aimed at petitioning Pres. Cory Aquino to issue an executive order, by virtue of her emergency powers, formally recognizing Biliran as a separate province. It was fervently wished that Pres. Aquino would grant the petition as her Christmas gift to the people of Biliran for the year 1986.
Resolutions of support were passed by the different municipal councils and associations of barangay captains of Biliran Subprovince, and signatures were solicited from officers and members of civic, religious, and youth organizations, and from the general citizenry. Together with an earlier version of this position paper, the attached resolutions of support and the solicited signatures were submitted to the national office of the (then) Ministry of Local Government (MLG) in Manila for favorable endorsement or action.
However, political developments in Manila provided obstacles to the petition for the provincehood of Biliran. There was a revamp of some cabinet ministers in December 1986, in reaction to an attempted coup d’etat the month before. MLG Minister Aquilino Pimentel was removed from his position and changed with the late Minister Jaime Ferrer.
Nothing was heard about the Biliran petition from the MLG as the people got busied with another political involvement. The issue between December 1986 and February 1987 was the New Constitution, which was eventually ratified with 75 percent of the votes cast in the February 1987 plebiscite. The people of Biliran ratified the New Constitution with 65 percent of the votes cast.
The MLG finally acted on the 1986 petition for the provincehood of Biliran sometime in March 1987. The action was a big disappointment. Minister Ferrer, in endorsing the petition to Pres. Aquino, merely noted that the subject of the Biliran petition was something that can be taken up by the future Congress.
The provincehood of Biliran was a big issue during the political campaign for the Congressional Elections held in May 1987. For the Third District of Leyte, almost all the candidates promised provincehood for Biliran. The election was won by Representative Alberto Veloso, who hails from the town of Villaba in mainland Leyte, and not from Biliran.
Nevertheless, true to his election promise, Rep. Veloso filed House Bill No. 485, “An Act Separating the Subprovince of Biliran from the Province of Leyte and Constituting or Converting It into a Separate, Independent, Regular Province, to be known as the Province of Biliran,” in the House of Representatives. H.B. No. 485 was co-authored by the four other congressmen from the province of Leyte (see Annex “E”).
The filing of H.B. No. 485 was met with initial elation by the people of Biliran. But, as house bills with later code numbers got passed in the House of Representatives, it became apparent that the Biliran bill (H.B. No. 485) has remained as it is – a bill!
Then, while H.B. No. 485 remained shelved, Senator Aquilino Pimentel came up with Senate Bill No. 155, “The Local Government Code of 1988.” S. No. 155 provides a section that, when passed without amendment, would spell the doom of Biliran Subprovince:
Section 462. Existing Sub-provinces. – Existing sub-provinces are hereby abolished and their component municipalities shall form part of their mother province or provinces upon the effectivity of this Code, without the necessity of conducting a plebiscite therefore.
Once again, the Subprovince of Biliran (together with Guimaras Island near Panay, the only other subprovince left) is close to being unnecessarily dissolved, this time even without popular consultation with the affected constituents.
The Subprovince of Biliran is now 29 years old. It has been bypassed by other provinces, and fellow subprovinces that had become provinces, despite their smaller population, territorial, and annual income levels.
Biliran could not become a province a province according to the provisions of the 1978 Local Government Code (B.P. Blg. 337). Biliran cannot become a province if Senate Bill No. 155, especially its Section 462, is passed without proper amendment. Certainly, Biliran will not become a province if House Bill No. 485 remains shelved in the House of Representatives.
It is against this background of realities that we seek justice for the cause of the people of Biliran. The Subprovince of Biliran will have to be declared a separate, independent, and autonomous regular province in the manner that former smaller subprovinces had been converted into provinces – by a Congressional Act!
Problems and Issues
1.
Token vs. full complement of facilities, personnel, and
services of national government offices
Because of the ambiguity of the status of the Subprovince of Biliran (i.e., it operates like a province, but is not fully recognized as one), it has been treated with ambivalence by national government offices in terms of facilities development and staff distribution.
On the one hand, such offices as the Department of Local Government (DLG), National Food Authority (NFA), Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS), and the Department of Health (DOH), have recognized Biliran as a province for their administrative convenience, and had put up the corresponding facilities and personnel requirements. Except for the DOH, where its main facility, the Naval District Hospital, still has to be upgraded, in terms of facilities and personnel, to a provincial hospital category.
On the other hand, other national offices have not been as keen as the above-cited offices. They have merely assigned token staff to perform their official commitments. To cite a few examples, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) merely assigned a team of personnel; and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Probation Office assigned one-man staffs – only these to serve the needs of the Biliran constituents.
Other offices (e.g., National Irrigation Administration) treat Biliran as part of Leyte.
The formal recognition of Biliran as a province will signal the influx of a full complement of government services for its people, and not merely the incomplete, token staff it was provided with all these 29 years of its existence as if it were a province.
2.
Biliran as a structural and organizational anomaly
The continued existence of Biliran as a subprovince, an intermediate tier between that of a province and a municipality, is against all principles of good government. It is a structural and organizational anomaly that is neither efficient nor effective, and must be rectified, preferably through the elevation of the status of Biliran to that of a regular province.
The purpose of establishing a subprovince is to provide an apprenticeship in self-government for the people and the leaders of an identified future province. The expectation is that, once the capacity has been essentially attained, provincehood is finally granted. However, this interim arrangement, while politically logical and convenient, does not have much scientific management basis.
Nevertheless, Biliran has already shown its capacity to self-govern and be self-governed. Therefore, it should be finally recognized as a province.
3.
Policy-making and legislative autonomy
At present, Biliran as a subprovince is dependent on Leyte, its mother province, in the area of policy-making and legislation. In this regard, Biliran sends a special board member to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) of Leyte to represent the interests of the subprovince in that body. However, his participation is limited only to matters concerning the subprovince; he has no vote except as regards such matters.
As mandated, the role of the special board member for Biliran in the SP of Leyte is essentially defective. He could easily be overruled in the sense that the mother province may have concerns separate from the needs and requirements of the subprovince. In matters of priority, the mother province will logically treat legislations affecting her own interests, consequently relegating the subprovince to a lesser priority.
The creation of a separate province will facilitate policy-making and legislative interventions necessary for the full development of Biliran. There will be a separate Sangguniang Panlalawigan that will set the policies and directions for the growth and development of the island province. It is expected that these policies will be more relevant and responsive as the SP members are accountable to the constituents whom they represent.
Conclusion
The Subprovince of Biliran needs to be finally and formally recognized as an autonomous, regular province.
In a more material sense, the issue involves the popular clamor for a full complement of facilities, personnel and services of national government offices for the Biliran constituents. The subprovince deserves more than the incomplete, token facilities and staff of government it was provided all these years it had existed as if it were a province.
In a much deeper sense, however, the issue involves the question of dignity and full autonomy. The people of Biliran deserve to chart their own destiny separately and independently from the province of Leyte in the spirit of self-reliance and self-determination.
We are determined to exercise all the possible democratic options to achieve our goal.
We hope we shall not fail in our quest.
Home