February 4, 2025 l Manila Bulletin
The Sinulog Festival returned to its roots last month with the revival of the parade route in Cebu City’s historic Mabolo District, where it all began in 1980. “One Beat, One Dance, One Vision” was the theme of this year’s edition organized by the Sinulog Foundation Inc. (SFI). As an ode to tradition, it was SFI’s way of revisiting history that has become a source of pride for the residents of Mabolo.
Now on its 45th year, the Sinulog’s grand finale went back to its original site at the more accessible Cebu City Sports Center (CCSC) after two years of being celebrated at the South Road Properties (SRP) reclamation area. Former city mayor Michael Rama was the one who pushed to hold the Philippines’ biggest and grandest cultural festival at the SRP because he believed that it was the right venue to prevent stampedes.
But former vice mayor and current Cebu City Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia—who took over in 2024 when the Office of the Ombudsman dismissed Rama—said business owners and small entrepreneurs were happy with the local government’s decision to return the grand parade and ritual showdown to the city center. According to estimates of the city’s police and disaster risk management offices, around four million people attended Sinulog 2025.
It may be noted that politics has hounded the Sinulog celebration since 2023, with the provincial government under Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia holding a separate “Sinulog sa Lalawigan” at the CCSC as a standalone event involving contingents from the province that pulled out of the city’s “Sinulog sa Dakbayan” at the SRP.
This year, both Cebu City and Cebu province are headed by members of the Garcia clan. Their political party, called One Cebu, has been dominant in provincial politics over the past 15 years, with six of the seven incumbent congressmen belonging to the One Cebu coalition along with 31 out of the 53 mayors throughout Cebu – the country’s No. 1 vote-rich province with more than three million registered voters in the 2019 and 2022 elections.
After the festival, One Cebu endorsed former Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III’s comeback bid in the May 2025 senatorial elections. More than a dozen party leaders declared in a video clip referring to his nickname: “One Cebu, Ako Bisaya, Tito Sen.” Sotto traces his family’s lineage to the province as a grandson of the late Cebuano senator and congressman Vicente Sotto Sr.
Even if he is part of the administration’s Senate slate, Sotto publicly expressed his misgivings about the controversial 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) signed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. into law late last year. Several portions of the GAA pertaining to certain budgetary allocations were allegedly left blank and subsequently filled in with questionable amounts by congressional minions upon instructions from the bicameral conference committee (BCC).
Sotto called out Marikina Representative Stella Quimbo for her statement as acting chair of the House of Representatives committee on appropriations that the supposed blank items in the BCC report were merely ministerial and only for final computation by the technical staff. She admitted that the BCC explicitly authorized the technical secretariats of the two legislative chambers to implement corrections and adjustments as required in its report on the 2025 budget.
Having been a senator for four terms, Sotto knew from experience that legislators’ mandate is never delegated. Reacting to Quimbo’s statement, he made this recommendation: “Some of our legislators need to undergo a parliamentary rules and procedures workshop. Ministerial corrections are never allowed in any bill, much more a law. You should bring it back to the plenary.”
Protest rallies were held last week in Metro Manila and other regions against unauthorized insertions in the national budget, among other issues that involve corruption in the country’s public institutions. Rallyists demanded accountability from top government officials whom they accused of plundering public funds for personal gain.
If their concerns are not addressed properly, the citizenry’s growing restiveness could further escalate and turn into a social upheaval similar to what the nation underwent in the mid-1980s and early 2000s.
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