THE KILLING OF FORMER MAYOR REY YAP of Sapang Dalaga town in Misamis Occidental on Jan. 30 in Manila opened another trail of blood in the saga of the rich and once politically powerful family in the coconut-producing north of the province.

It is this unending story that has brought the politics of chaos to a sixth-class municipality (annual income: below P10 million) where people survive by selling copra, a commodity that has also brought wealth for the past six decades to the dynasty now gasping from a loosened grip on power.

Just like his father, Rino Sr., also a former mayor, Rey suffered the fate that befell three of four uncles and a cousin: Death by assassins’ bullets at the prime of life.

Rino Sr. was killed in the mid-1980s, in an ambush allegedly carried out by the communist New People’s Army (NPA). The Yaps supposedly retaliated by killing an alleged former guerrilla, Julie Ontulan. Rey was made to answer for that case in a Manila court.

The next fatality was Redulio in 1989, followed by Rizalio Jr. during the 1992 election campaign; Teddy, more known as Thiamine, in 1994; and Agapito Jr., then Baliangao town mayor, in June 1995.

Most of the killings were attributed to political rivalry. But sources, including Yap supporters, point out that only the killings of Rizalio Jr., Teddy and Agapito Jr. “have strong links to the political battles” of the family.

The Yaps descended from the union of a Chinese trader, who adopted the name Agapito Sr., and a local belonging to the Villanueva clan, through which the couple had familial relations with the Buenos and Baricas of Baliangao. The families have remained as the local elite since Baliangao became a Spanish township in the late 1800s.

Having made a fortune from copra trading in the mid-1940s, the Yaps wrested political power from their relatives in Baliangao. This signaled the start of the family’s more aggressive expansion in business and political influence in the north. Its clout was later protected by cultivating cozy connections with national government leaders, and made immune from challenge by the use of force.

By 1971, the family expanded to Sapang Dalaga, Baliangao’s coastal neighbor; Rino Sr. reigned as mayor, and this had allowed his family to lord over the copra business.

At the height of their power, getting the family’s support was crucial in winning a congressional seat in Misamis Occidental’s first district and securing a significant edge in close fights for governor.

Save for the death of Rino Sr. in an alleged NPA attack, the Yaps survived the communist sweep in Baliangao, Sapang Dalaga and much of the northern towns in the 1980s.

Even the 1986 Edsa I revolutionary government failed to shake them from power; Rey even inherited his father’s mayoral post, firming up his rule by winning the 1988 election.

The tide began to turn against the Yaps in 1992 when they ventured into nearby Rizal town of Zamboanga del Norte, where they also maintain landholdings.

Roy, son of Rino Sr., ran for mayor of Rizal and headed a slate fielded in the 1992 polls. He faced Victorio Cebedo, scion of a migrant landowner who was allied with the powerful Jalosjos family of Zamboanga del Norte.

In the heat of the campaign, Victorio was gunned down, forcing his brother Perfecto to replace him as candidate. Perfecto won against Roy, whose campaign was largely engineered by Rey, an older brother then expected to handily win reelection as Sapang Dalaga mayor.

The Cebedos point to the Yaps as the brains behind Victorio’s killing, specifically Rey and Roy. This began a legal and political duel that exists up to this day and blamed for the string of violent killings involving members of both families.

In 1994, Perfecto was implicated in the murder of Teddy Yap and detained for nine months, but he was later absolved.

Some years after, the Yaps were blamed for shooting the van of Prudencio Cebedo, Victorio and Perfecto’s brother, in Manila. In November 2002, Perfecto was killed in an ambush in Alabang.

Amid the bloody confrontations, the Cebedos struck alliances with the Yaps’ political adversaries. They adopted this strategy to fend off the Yaps’ plan for political expansion, according to the late Gabriel Catane, a close Cebedo ally who served as Rizal mayor.

A similar tack is being adopted by former Rep. Romeo Jalosjos, who does not want the Yaps “messing around” in his political dominion, a well-placed source said.

In 2003, the Yaps accused a brother of Jalosjos and the Cebedos of assisting policemen from Manila who raided the family compound and seized machines for making counterfeit bills and a cache of high-powered firearms.

In every election, the Cebedos openly support the rival slate of the Yaps, even helping provide logistics. This paid off in 1998 when the tandem of Joel Maniwan and Donjie Animas won and dealt a humiliating defeat to the slate of Rosaly Jean, Rey’s wife. It happened when brothers Rey and Roy were detained for the murder of Victorio Cebedo.

With this “breakthrough” and with continued support from the Cebedos, the anti-Yap alliance of the Animas, Maniwan and Duhaylungsod families gained strength. Soon, it attracted progressive politicians, like Rep. Ernie Clarete, who have long wanted to dislodge the Yaps from power.

The Yaps refused to budge and were said to have resorted to “legal assaults” to wage their political battle. They were believed to have engineered the filing of illegal recruitment charges against Maniwan and Animas in 1999, booting them out of power, and giving way to No. 1 Councilor Pacita Yap, Rey’s mother, to ascend to the mayoralty.

The battleground has changed and the Yaps now confront a “new enemy”—the three allied families. But the “old face” of violence continues.

Just before the start of the 2001 election campaign, 15 people were seriously wounded in a series of gunfire exchanges. Last year, a cousin of Donjie Animas was killed.

And when once they were bent on capturing the mayoralty and vice mayoralty, the contending camps are now preoccupied with capturing all elective seats.

In 2001, Pacita won the mayoral post, but Manuel Animas, Donjie’s father, became vice mayor. Three months into power, Manuel was believed to have replicated Pacita’s scheme back in 1999, this time, taking her to answer for murder charges.

As Pacita went at large, Manuel assumed the mayoralty. In 2003, he secured a suspension order on her from the provincial board for negligence of duty, barring her from the mayoralty until her term was over by June 2004.

In 2004, Manuel anointed his wife Virginia for the mayorship, apprehensive of being booted out as the Yaps allegedly engineered trumped-up charges against him. But with Pacita at large and Rey in prison, Manuel successfully sailed through his wife’s mayoral candidacy in 2004.

In 2007, Animas oversaw the rout of the Yap slate, managing to clinch the mayoralty down to seven of eight councilors.

But recently, Virginia is the new object of complaints for a crime allegedly committed in Luzon. All are designed to cripple the Animas camp’s mayoral material, Manuel said.

The governance process is also a proxy battleground that rendered the local political administration dysfunctional. This is best mirrored in the usual gridlock in the approval of the annual executive budget by the municipal council.

Animas once related that he had to barter the release of the councilors’ salaries and benefits for the budget’s approval.

And to avoid becoming a “hostage” to the council’s “power of the purse,” Animas said he had to look for external sources, like the provincial government and the priority development assistance fund (PDAF) of a congressman, which would only come in handy with the right political alignment.

Amid all this frenzy, Sapang Dalaga wallows in underdevelopment, its people standing as mute witnesses to the bloody power play. Last year, Animas vowed that this would never be the case with his camp having “solid control of local government power.”

Although the Yaps have now lost power in the town, they still wield it from their base in Baliangao. However, the situation is attended by a rift between an uncle and a nephew over control of the mayoralty, crippling the Yaps’ capability to help their relatives in Sapang Dalaga.

But it may still be a long way to see the demise of the Yap dynasty translating into a vibrant democracy for Sapang Dalaga.