Chess tournament marks Cordillera peace accord

 By Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- A modest team chess tournament marked a historic event  now hardly remembered:  the signing of a peace accord by  then President Corazon Aquino and rebel priest, Fr. Conrado Balweg as leader of the Cordillera people’s Liberation Army (CPLA), on Sept. 13, 1986 at the Mt. Data Lodge in Bauko, Mt.Province.  

That government- CPLA peace accord led to the issuance by President Aquino on July 16, 1987 of Executive Order 220 creating the Cordillera Administrative Region, the supposed interim set-up complete with national government agencies  mandated to prepare this upland region for autonomy.

The anniversary of the establishment of the interim region is a big event, marked,  among others, by the travel of a “unity gong” through the  six  provinces and one city composing the  same. The forging of the peace pact at Mt. Data  is now hardly observed, except perhaps by a team chess tournament played at the sixth floor of the Maharlika Building here last Sept, 13-14.

Team  Apayao,  bannered by retired Bureau of Plant Industry superintendent Onofre Verzola, chalked up nine points to emerge champion  in the four-per-team, six-team single round robin series.

Team Philhealth, dispatched by lawyer Jerry  Ibay, regional vice-president of the government medical insurance agency and captained by Vincent Abellanoza,  piled up eight points for second place in the two-day competition.

Team Mt. Province, one of five teams symbolically representing the otherwise unrepresented Cordillera provinces and composed of students sent by Dr. Elma Dalog-Donaal, principal of the Baguio City National high School, salvaged third place with a seven-point aggregate.

“It is also worth mentioning that five of the school’s chess players qualified for the Milo Chess Olympics scheduled in Cebu City by the end of September,” noted former regional agrarian reform director Henry Aliten, now president of the BAMIKBA (Benguet-Apayao-Mt. Province-Ifugao-Kalinga-Baguio-Abra), a new non-government organization which sponsored the tournament.

The Milo Chess Olympics-bound players are Joshua Magno, Mark Quitlong, Federico Banutan, Ricky Docejo and Vince Concepcion, with Ariel Abellada as coach.

Aliten said the awarding of prizes and trophies will be done in consultation with city councilor Faustino Olowan who  co-sponsored the tournament