Today the City of Tacloban is all set for the Sangyaw Festival 2009. This is the second time the festival has been staged since its revival last year.
Sangyaw is actually a fiesta celebrated during the 70’s during the time when Imelda Romualdez Marcos was still the First Lady of the Philippines. In fact, it was her who initiated to have this event. It was also the Romualdez’s who revived the Sangyaw last year.
This year’s Festival event would feature the Cebu City Sinulog Festival, Masskara Festival from Bacolod, Isabela Basilan’s Cocowayan Festival, Iloilo City Dinagyang Festival, Surigao City’s Bonok Bonok Marajaw Karajaw Festival, Santiago City’s Pattaradday Festival, Basey’s Kawayan-Banigan Festival, Legazpi’s Magayon Festival and Tacloban City’s Tribu Kabatuk.
Last year, the grand prize winner was the Tribu Kabatok of Tacloban followed by the Lumad Basakanon of Sinulog Festival. Bacolod City’s Masskara Festival performed as a guest participant only.
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This should send shivers down Gloria Arroyo’s spine.
by Mica Rosenberg Mica Rosenberg
Tegucigalpa (Reuters) – The Honduran army ousted President Manuel Zelaya and threw him out of the country on Sunday in Central America’s first military coup since the Cold War, after he upset the army by trying to win re-election.
U.S. President Barack Obama expressed deep concern after troops came for Zelaya, an ally of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, at dawn and took him away from his residence.
A military plane flew Zelaya to Costa Rica and CNN’s Spanish-language channel said he had asked for asylum there.
Police fired tear gas at pro-government protesters in the capital, Honduran radio said, and two fighter jets screamed through the sky over the capital.
The impoverished Central American country had been politically stable since the end of military rule in the early 1980s, but Zelaya’s push to change the constitution to allow him another term has split the country’s institutions.
Zelaya fired military chief Gen. Romeo Vasquez last week for refusing to help him run an unofficial referendum on Sunday on extending the four-year term limit on Honduran presidents.
Zelaya told Venezuela-based Telesur television station that he was “kidnapped” by soldiers and called on Hondurans to peacefully resist the coup.
Pro-Zelaya demonstrators gathered at the presidential palace, which was surrounded by soldiers.
“Here, the people are angry,” said protester Boris Vanyas.
The EU condemned the coup and Obama called for calm.
Honduras was a staunch U.S. ally in the 1980s when Washington helped Central American governments fight left-wing guerrillas.
“Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference,” Obama said.
It was the first successful military ouster of a president in Central America since the Cold War era.
Honduras’s Supreme Court last week came out against Zelaya and ordered him to reinstate fired military chief Vasquez.
The global economic crisis has curbed growth in Honduras, which lives off coffee and textile exports and remittances from Honduran workers abroad. Recent opinion polls indicate public support for Zelaya has fallen as low as 30 percent.
Honduras, home to around 7 million people, is a major drug trafficking transit point.
It is also a big coffee producer but there was no immediate sign the unrest would affect production.
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