Cagayan de Oro candidate vows to turn village into ‘little Davao’

Noel Guevara’s poster shows him with Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte.

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY — A 49-year-old businessman running for barangay chair in one of this city’s 80 villages has only one campaign promise — to turn his community of 27,000 residents into a “little Davao,” President Rodrigo Duterte’s hometown.

Noel “Chebong” Guevara, who runs a quarrying business, a travel agency and a spa, is running against four candidates in Bugo, a village about 13 kilometers away from downtown Cagayan de Oro City.

Bugo is the city’s sixth most populous village, and is third on the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency’s (PDEA) list of drug-affected villages in the city.

“I want to replicate Davao. I’m pushing for a cleaner Bugo, a safe Bugo, a drug-free Bugo,” said Guevara, whose rivals included the village’s top councilor, Monico Capirig.

Duterte supporter

An avowed supporter of the President, Guevara displayed a tarpaulin streamer showing a picture of himself, his hand raised by Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, the President’s daughter.

“Together we will make Bugo a little Davao,” the tarpaulin streamer read.

Although the village has its share of informal settlers, Bugo is also home to at least four large subdivisions, where employees and officials of Del Monte Philippines Inc. live.

Del Monte’s pineapple cannery in the village has been a major source of jobs.

Guevara also promised that he, once elected, would provide the Barangay Anti-Drug Abuse Council (Badac) with an office and allocate funds for its operations from the village’s P12-million Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) each year.

But while Guevarra is all praises for the government’s antidrug campaign, another Duterte supporter running for reelection in another village here did not agree with the way the illegal drug problem was handled by the administration.

Reelectionist village chief Jaime Frias wants more arrests in “Oplan Tokhang.”

Arrests

“I have been vocal in my opposition to [Oplan] Tokhang (knock-and-plead),” said reelectionist chair Jaime Frias of Barangay 23, a village of more than 916 residents. “What I want are antidrug operations leading to arrests,” he added.

Frias said an official of the PDEA regional office in Northern Mindanao had accused him of not cooperating in the antidrug war, probably because of his stance against “Oplan Tokhang,” which had been criticized due to its mounting death toll.

But Frias said he had been working closely with the PDEA and the police to stop drug use in his village.

Barangay 23 was declared drug-free last year but Frias said he was shocked to discover his village had been recently tagged by PDEA as one of the drug-affected communities in the city.

According to Frias, the barangay council has been holding Bible studies and counseling for drug suspects who surrendered to authorities.

Regardless of the result of the barangay election, Frias said his position on the government’s antidrug campaign would not change. —Jigger Jerusalem