Now ongoing at the Leyte Sports Development Center (Grandstand)... The City Government did not allow the organizers permit to use the usual parade route. Instead, it gave the nod to the pedicab race!
I will not waste my time asking why this has to happen? What I will just say is some people have not learned the lesson of Yolanda!
Anyway this is nothing new. But let me say this =Anywhere the Pintados (now on its 28th year)-kasadyaan Festival of Festival is held, devotees and spectators in thousands, will be there.
Twenty -eight years ago, Pintados Festival was conceptualized and started as a brainchild of young professionals and businessmen in Tacloban City who felt the vacuum that was left when the Marcoses and the Romualdezes were forced to leave the country after EDSA 1. I know because I was there in the middle of all the preparations and chipping in of resources. I know because together with my friends Marirose Veloso and Pinky Cruz who composed the Ms. Pintados committee, we had to go around mobilizing people and stirring the conscience of our friends just so the Pintados Kasayadyaan will be staged for the first time in 1987.
This was our way of helping our husbands who composed the Pintados Board.
More than ever this Twin Festival is relevant and needed. Not only to provide a semblance of normalcy but because we have more than ever reasons to thank the Patron of Tacloban for delivering us from the wrath of Yolanda.
No festival competition will be conducted in deference to the economic crisis brought about by Yolanda.
Instead, best festival groups from all over the Visayas Island will perform among which are the Maskara Festival of Bacolod, Dinagyang from Iloilo, Sinulog of Cebu, Banigan Festival of Basey and Buyugan Festival of Abuyog, Leyte.
After the Festival, a concert of matinee idol Daniel Padilla whose mother Karla hails from Tacloban, will be conducted right at the Grandstand. opt
