PEOPLE POWWOW

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BY HERBERT VEGO
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All about the Iloilo Press Club, Mabilog and Ynion

MOTORISTS and pedestrians passing by the three-level building of the Iloilo Press Club (IPC) at San Pedro St., Molo, Iloilo  City  wonder why it is closed all the time, gathering dust and inviting burglars who have already stolen some of its window jalousies. If I remember right, construction of the concrete building started in 2012.
As all members of the Iloilo media are aware of, it was businessman and former newspaperman Rommel S. Ynion who funded its construction soon after his election as president of the Iloilo Press Club (IPC).  It was a laudable move aimed at dignifying the reputation of the IPC as the oldest press club in the Philippines.
Available printed accounts of the club’s birth do not exactly mesh. Some site the year 1937. But according to historian Demy Sonza (an incumbent Iloilo provincial board member), it was a year earlier in 1936 when Exequiel Villalobos founded IPC and was elected its first president.  Therefore the club is now 80 years old.
Villalobos and company have passed away, but we present–day journalists and broadcasters in Iloilo City are obliged to keep their legacy alive.
As a “homesick” past president of the IPC, I truly feel sad over our inability to hold club affairs in the finished building because the mayor would not grant our request for building, occupancy and business permits.  Were we a “collateral damage” of a political battle? We surmised that if Ynion were not the building donor, the mayor might have been friendlier.
You see, since it was Ynion– the building donor, to reiterate – who attempted to unseat him in the 2013 election, Mayor Jed Patrick E. Mabilog must have borne grudge against him.  But I would rather not belabor this conjecture anymore; it’s already water under the bridge.
Just the other day, in a heart-tugging ceremony at Iloilo City Hall, the mayor and incumbent IPC president Francis Allan Angelo signed the deed of usufruct awarding to the club the use of the city lot for 50 years. The mayor lamented that he had not acknowledged the alleged previous deed of usufruct done by a past administration — no doubt referring to former Mayor Mansueto Malabor– for its failure to fulfill certain requirements.
In the end, however, it was Mabilog himself who prevailed upon the Sangguniang Panlungsod to pass a resolution authorizing him to sign the donation deed.
It was understandable that he made no mention of his past political conflict with Ynion, whose recent Facebook post tells the mayor, “We in the media will never forget this gift from you and the city council. Of course, this would not have been possible had Francis Angelo, the IPC president, not moved heaven and earth to make this a reality. May God bless all of you!”
It was indeed a demonstration of reconciliation without compromising the independence of the Iloilo media. To quote the late American journalist H. L. Mencken, a newsman’s duty is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
We have no doubt that both the Mabilog and Ynion can now be expected to further boost the resources of the IPC.  Ynion has vowed to donate at least a thousand reference books.
There is no indication that the two would clash again in 2019. Already, Ynion’s “appetite” has shifted from politics to vegetable farming. He personally tends to his vast plantation of lettuce, potato and tomato at Bab’s Farm in Tagaytay City.  He sells them to hotels and restaurants in Metro Manila.
“I can hardly meet the demand,” he told this writer.
But he and wife Kathleen make sure that their own Salad Bowl Restaurant in Muntinlupa City is well-stocked./PN
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