Polls worsen clan feud in Dinagat
Jade Ecleo. DANILO ADORADOR
SURIGAO CITY—After suffering a narrow loss in the gubernatorial race, outgoing Dinagat Vice Gov. Geraldine “Jade” Ecleo hoped to be reconciled with her mother and siblings. What she got instead was a snub.
Jade said her defeat even made her relations with Glenda Ecleo, the reelected governor of the Dinagat Islands and her mother, worse. Her siblings, she said, even hate her now because of her sister Gwendolyn’s defeat to Arlene “Kaka” Bag-ao, also of the Liberal Party (LP), in the race for the province’s lone congressional seat.
“They’re angrier now because I nearly won and Kaka was victorious,” Jade told the Inquirer in a phone interview, referring to her defeat by a margin of 625 votes.
Gwendolyn Ecleo, the outgoing mayor of Dinagat town, lost to Bag-ao by over 2,000 votes, although another sibling, Benglen, won the vice gubernatorial contest against Jade’s running mate, Merly Lagroma.
In past interviews, the Ecleo matriarch had rejected reconciliation with her daughter, with whom she has been estranged for years, culminating in Jade’s decision to challenge her in the May 13 elections.
“I don’t need her. I wasn’t the one who defied her own mother. I can stand on my own,” Governor Ecleo responded when asked by the Inquirer about the possibility of a mother-daughter reconciliation in an interview late last year.
Reconciliation deal
Jade said the feud worsened after the elections.
“My mother and my siblings tried to hammer out a reconciliation deal with me, in which I would be welcomed into the family fold once again in exchange for running against Kaka (Bag-ao) in 2016,” she said.
Glenda Ecleo. DANILO ADORADOR
When she told Bag-ao about it, the congresswoman-elect supposedly responded that she would not run again in 2016 in Jade’s favor.
Nevertheless, Jade said she rejected the “reconciliation deal” outright. “In the first place, there is no modicum of sincerity in it because it came with a condition,” she said.
“Secondly, I can’t imagine replacing Kaka, who is one of the best public officials Dinagatnons can have, so that I can pretend to be reconciled with my family,” she said.
Jade has also accused some of her close relatives of plotting to kill her, making it difficult for her to “forgive and forget and be in good terms with them again.”
Ecleo politicians
Considered the most charismatic among the Ecleos, Jade led a number of other Ecleos—whom she described as the “Good Ecleos”—in the LP team to challenge her family’s dominance in Dinagat.
Riding on the platform of change and promising to hold her family accountable, she was an early favorite, even among members of the Philippine Benevolent Missionary Association (PBMA) who form the core of her family’s decades-old political control of Dinagat.
Jade said she was shocked by her loss, but she tried to find solace in the possibility of her loss sparing her mother from a heart attack.
“I guess it’s a blessing in disguise,” Jade said. “Although, the slim margin says it all, the people of Dinagat are slowly rejecting abuse, corruption and manipulation as a form of governance,” she said.
She also said her reason for running was not “to defeat my mother anyway.”
“I ran for the love of my mother, as she is well in her 70s, and I know in my heart that her foray into politics at this delicate age is influenced by my siblings,” Jade said.
She promised not to run against her mother again in 2016, but did not guarantee the same if her rival would be one of her siblings.
Her siblings, Alan I and Allan II, were reelected mayors of Basilisa and San Jose towns. A half-brother, Ruben Al, was reelected vice mayor of Cagdianao. A nephew—Gwendolyn’s son—won as mayor of Dinagat town.
Corruption
Jade has accused her own mother and siblings of neglect, even corruption, in their decades of being public officials in Dinagat, one of the country’s poorest provinces.
She has vowed to maintain her presence in the province.
“I will hold regular consultations, I will visit far-flung barangays and I will continue helping the people in any way I can,” she said. “Those who think I’ll just disappear after the May elections should think again,” she added.
