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
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