Another grenade hurls at P’sinan mayor’s house

Unperturbed: Mayor Perez

BY MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

URDANETA CITY - An unidentified person lobbed recently a grenade at the house of this city’s top executive making it the second bomb throwing incident at a mayor’s house in Pangasinan since the start of the local election campaign period in March 29 this year.
 Mayor Amadeo Gregorio E Perez IV said that when his servant went out to clean the front yard with a broom she found a grenade without a pin lying idly near the main door. “It was around 6 in the morning the time she would be doing her everyday's chores,” Perez said on the servant who was horrified to see a grenade blocking her way.
“That day was my birthday and I and my family were preparing to attend the morning’s mass,” Perez stressed.
After the discovery, policemen here took the grenade from the mayor’s house for safety.
 A police source, who asked anonymity, said that the explosive was a U.S made apple-type grenade.
 Two days before the tossing, Perez was the gracious host to 28 Pangasinan mayors mostly from the Nationalist Peoples’ Coalition at his residence here with their honored guest President Benigno Simeon Aquino III – a member of the Liberal Party.
 A mayor in Central Pangasinan ,who was on that meeting but asked not to be named, said that the president and LP gubernatorial bet Hernani Braganza broke from their senatorial and local ticket entourage and went at Perez’s house to meet with the mayors of the rival NPC.
 He said that aside from the mayor, his father Amadito – the former town mayor here and the incumbent chair of Manila Economic and Cultural Office entertained the president and Braganza.
 In that meeting, the source said, Aquino told the mayors that he would still be the president of the land for the next three years.
 He exhorted them that incase they support the electoral bid of Braganza they can expect assistance from his office.
The NPC mayors support the reelection of Pangasinan governor Amada T. Espino.
 “Sa 82 probinsiya sa Pilipinas, ngayon lang ako naki-usap na tulungan ninyo ang kandidato ko sa pagka-gobernador,” the mayor quoted the president.
 He said many of the mayors were disappointed after that meeting because President Aquino did not give them financial assistance for their supposed aid to Braganza.
10 days before the throwing of the grenade at the house of Mayor Perez, the residence of Bugallon Mayor Ric Orduna was blasted by a World War II fragmentation type grenade.
 According to police investigation the grenade, lobbed at 1:35 A.M, damaged the front door and the gutter wall of Orduna’s house.
No one was hurt on the blast.