Tabuk City gives Mayor Estrañero fresh mandate

TABUK CITY, Kalinga -- Majority of the city's electorate has given Mayor Darwin C. Estrañero a fresh mandate to serve as the local chief executive during the May 9 elections.
    Estrañero was proclaimed by the City Board of Canvassers last week after garnering 24,718 votes, way ahead of his closest rival Vice Mayor Bernard Glenn Daoas who got 18,038 votes and Macario Balanggao Jr. who received 16,079 votes.
    Josephine Odsey, who earlier withdrew from the city's mayoral race, ended up with 102 votes.

"We are grateful to the people of Tabuk for giving us a fresh mandate to serve them and pursue the city's growth and development. We still have a lot of unfinished business that we have to pursue during our next term for our city to be elevated to greater heights," Estrañero said.

For his second term as mayor, Estrañero city public market, construction of a local government-operated hospital and a solar farm.

He also promised to entice more investors to establish their businesses in the city to generate more jobs for the residents and enhance other economic activities and sources of livelihood of the people.

He said Tabuk has great potentials of becoming onevowed to pursue high impact development projects like the ongoing upgrading and improvement of the  of the well-developed local governments in the north because of vast tracts of land that could be developed into industrial zones without compromising its identity as rice granary of the Cordillera Administrative Region where it plays host to more than 10,000 hectares of rice farms.

Estrañero said significant increase in investments in the city will boost efforts of concerned government agencies and local government to increase availability of existing jobs for the people to be able to recover from  heavy impact inflicted by the pandemic after having been displaced from their work and other economic activities over the past two years.

Tabuk is being promoted by the Regional Development Council in the CAR as the future growth center in the region with establishment of the Eastern Kalinga Growth Center to up the city's development.

For the city's vice mayoral post, lawyer Dick Bal-o was declared winner after garnering 23,230 votes. Councilor Zorayda Mia Wacnang received 18,849, incumbent Liga ng mga Barangay president and Councilor Henry Tubban Jr. collected 15,132 and Gladelina Ottao got 195 votes.