JERRY PEREZ TREÑAS is both “graduating” congressman and “come-backing” mayor of Iloilo City, having regained City Hall in a hotly-contested fight pitting him against his bilas, outgoing mayor Jose Espinosa III.
The final count of 134,143 votes against 65,724 was so convincing that the loser conceded while vowing, “I shall return.”
In retrospect, it was Treñas who should have said that while campaigning for the May 13, 2019 election because he had been mayor before. In fact, his forthcoming occupancy of the mayor’s office on July 1, 2019 would mark his return to City Hall. Treñas had been councilor in 1986 and mayor for three consecutive terms or nine straight years from 2001 to 2010.
It has been another nine years since he first occupied Iloilo City’s lone-district seat at the House of Representatives and knowing that he has the longest political career and has a consistent leadership in serving llonggos.
“It has been a fantastic political career,” Mayor-elect Treñas quipped yesterday when asked to describe his destiny. “Today’s new generation of Ilonggo voters probably do not know that I had also lost the first time I ran for mayor.”
In the year 1998, having already served as city councilor, he ran against the then popular re-electionist mayor, Mansueto “Mansing” Malabor, and lost.
“I vowed not to run again,” he recalled. “I was doing well in my law practice.”
By an unforeseen fluke of fate, however, Malabor was on his last term and was willing to support him should he change his mind.
Ran again for mayor he did in 2001 with this campaign battle cry: “Kauswagan sang banwa, trabaho sa masa!” He won.
During that decade when he was mayor, he encouraged businessmen to engage in small- and medium-scale industries. The jeepney-body building industry, to cite one, was turning out hundreds of made-to-order jeepneys with car-like hoods.
He was preaching from example. His family’s Carlo’s Bakeshop and Café has been serving Iloilo since 1987 with their breads and cakes. Today, all five children of Mayor-elect Jerry and Mrs. Rosalie Treñas are at the helm of the RJT Group of Companies, which include Carlo’s, Ang Kamalig and Wild Bamboo restaurants.
In 2006, he predicted that Iloilo City would be a premier city in 2015. With the emergence of the Iloilo International Airport, the Iloilo Convention Center, high-rise hotels, restaurants and subdivisions, no one today doubts that his prediction has come true.
As congressman, Treñas has authored significant laws. One of them is the amended Magna Carta for PWDs, which granted automatic PhilHealth coverage to persons with disability, providing them monthly benefits similar to those of senior citizens.
Consumed by the passion to turn the city into a tourism haven despite its lack of resorts, Treñas authored Republic Act 10555, “an Act declaring the Jaro Cathedral, Molo Church, Central Business District, Fort San Pedro, Jaro Plaza Complex, Molo Plaza Complex and Plaza Libertad Complex as heritage and tourist spots.” Historical grounds justify the conversion of the seven landmarks as heritage and tourist spots.
The Jaro Cathedral, for instance, has the distinction of being the first and only cathedral built in Panay in 1864. It was in this Neo-Romanesque structure where Ilonggo hero Graciano Lopez Jaena was baptized in 1865.
Asked for the first item in his agenda as come-backing mayor, Treñas quipped, “I will freeze taxes on real property for three straight years.”
He would also declare moratorium on business permits, percentage taxes and other fees payable to the city government.
“We have to spur economic development through business activities especially in these difficult times,” Treñas explained, “We have to elevate the city to the next uswag level.”
“Uswag Iloilo!” was the campaign battle cry of the incoming mayor, which in English means “Prosper Iloilo.”
“For the city to prosper,” Treñas said, “we have to keep the people healthy and well-equipped to earn a living. We have to build a hospital for the poor, upgrade our public markets to level up with the malls, complete drainage projects, build high-rise condominiums as relocation sites and build senior-citizen and youth centers.”
As we were going to press yesterday, Jerry P. Treñas was meeting with the newly elected vice mayor, councilors, department heads, regular employees and other staff that will work hand in hand for the city to attain the next level./PN
