Mangaldan Vice Mayor berates, threatens Town Worker

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

MANGALDAN – A staff of the local government here will file a complaint at the police  against Vice Mayor Manuel Casupang who allegedly threatened him during the parade ceremony of the Grand Pindang Festival.

Vice Mayor Manny Casupang

Rodolfo Corla, Community Affairs Officer-1 (CAO-1), said Casupang not only bad mouthed and embarrassed him before the public but threatened him with the following utterances: “Magan-gano kala! Antayo kadayawen yo tan so gagawen yo shak (Your time is near! You did that thing for your glory at my expense)”.

He said the livid Casupang was apparently offended after the festival’s committee designated him to speak in the closing remarks of the Balikbayan Nights in March 3 and the Grand Parade in March 4.

The committee that made the program that put the vice mayor as the last speaker , according to Corla, was composed of Milagros J. Padilla and Rosalie Hulipas  from the mayor’s office, and Domie Marayag from the office of the Vice Mayor.

“Are you afraid of her, are you afraid of her?” Casupang tersely and incessantly asked Corla, as the latter narrated with media men, in the dialect as he pointed at the back of the mayor who was standing nearby.

Corla said the vice mayor called him stupid at the hearing distance of the crowd who attended the parade ceremony.

Rodolfo Corla

“Sinabi niya mga bobo kayo, mga bobo kayong gumagawa ng program,  mga bobo kayo diyan sa mayor’s office”.

Corla said Casupang was smarting because the committee that made the program did not include his name.
“Tapos kagabi pinag message mo ako noong wala ng mga ta-o, sabi niya,” the CAO-1 said.

But Padilla and a councillor, who asked anonymity, showed to the media previous fiesta programs’ magazines where the predecessors of Mayor Bona Fe D. Parayno had designated their respective vice mayors to speak in the closing remarks.

“There was already precedence in the past, what then got the goat of the vice mayor? Mabuti nga binibigyan pa siya ng role kahit opposition siya. In Dagupan City Vice Mayor Brian Lim has been outcast by Mayor Belen Fernandez in most of the occasions there dahil kalaban siya but Lim did not mince a word against the mayor,” Ruel Camba, a radio broadcaster, commented in his DWPR program the following morning.


Corla said he was too embarrassed in the acts of Casupang that he went to his office and broke down and cried.

Mayor Parayno lamented the actuation of Casupang.

“Bakit niya iti-threaten ang municipal employee na malapit na kayo? That is not right!” she deplored with the media.

The vice mayor was the tandem of Parayno in the mayoralty and vice mayoralty race in the 2013 polls versus the ticket of former acting Mayor Bernardo “Berex”  Abalos and former Councillor Joseph Emmanuel Cera who were both defeated with significant number of votes. But just a few months in the political saddle of this town, Casupang had a fall out with the mayor that cost him to loss benefits the chief executive customarily gives to the No. 2 man here.

Casupang, according to the source, moist eye for the mayoralty in the 2016 election caused his animosity with Parayno.