Three-Corner Mayoralty Derby in San Fabian

 

                        ANTI NARC CHIEF VS AGBAYANI, VILLEGAS

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

SAN FABIAN, Pangasinan – Comes the next year's election, the people of this coastal first class town will be treated with a three-corner mayoralty race, according to its outgoing mayor.

Mayor Constante ”Danny” Agbayani cited to this writer that aside from his wife Marlyn E. Agbayani and former ally's Pangasinan Board Member Liberato Villegas, a regional director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) assigned in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) will be joining the husting before the May 9, 2022 election to ingratiate in winning the votes of the 52, 334 voters here (Comelec 2018).

BARMM Regional Director Juvenal B. Azurin, a resident of this town, is member of Philippine Military Academy's Class of 2000 and a former Magdalo.

Magdalo is the military group that mutinied against President Arroyo’s Administration in August 30, 2007.

GROOMED MAYORALTY BETS in the first class town San Fabian, Pangasinan. From left: Marlyn Agbayani – the wife of the outgoing mayor Danny Agbayani, BARMM Regional Director Juvenal B. Azurin, and Board Member Liberato Villegas.

Azurin, according to sources, used to be the PDEA Regional Director of the Cordillera Autonomous Region before his present assignment in BARMM.

“He used to be my graduate class student in the University of Pangasinan when he was in the regional office of the PDEA,” former National Irrigation Administration Regional Director John Celeste told this newspaper.

“Gusto ko iyan (three cornered mayorship fight) para mahati ang mga boto ng kalaban,” quipped by Agbayani on how his mayoralty wannabe wife Marlyn will gnaw those votes going to Villegas and Azurin.

In the earlier interview by this writer, the outgoing mayor of this P230 Million's annual appropriation budget town said that his wife will vie for the mayorship in the May 9, 2022 election.

He changed his mind after endorsing since year 2020 Board Member Liberato Villegas to be his successor after his mentor and patron former Pangasinan Governor Amado T. Espino, Jr. called him up and other allied mayors of Pangasinan last January 2021 to finalize their slates for the May 2022 polls.

“Katatapos lang ng ambush ni ama. Sinabi niya sa akin Danny patakbuhin mo ang kamag-anak ko si Marlyn. E ano ang magawa ko boss ko siya at kamag-anak ni misis kaya hayon umiyak si Riby noong malaman hinde na siya,’ the Mayor told this writer in the vernacular.

He explained to Villegas, an outgoing Board Member of the Fourth District of Pangasinan, that he could not decline the tall order of Espino, a former Congressman of the Fifth District, for his wife as the party’s mayorship bet in the next poll.

He said the former solon ordered this town’s Sagud Bhaley Barangay Chairman Efren Fajardo, a loyalist and fellow alumni of Espino at the PMA to rally the 34 village chiefs here to support the bid of Marlyn.

Agbayani told this newspaper that the electoral alignment in this coastal town will be his wife running with re-elective Vice Mayor Marinor de Guzman, a close relative of Villegas, and the full ticket for the membership of the Sangguniang Bayan (legislature) under the auspices of the PDP Party versus the ticket of Villegas and Maria Rolyn Gubatan – a surgeon and a card carrying member of the Nationalist People’s Coalition.

This newspaper did not know yet who will be the vice mayoralty candidate of Azurin and his ticket for the legislature.