By Nanette Guadalquiver April 12, 2021, 8:03 pm

CHALLENGER. Former Negros Occidental 3rd district Rep. Alfredo “Albee” Benitez (standing) is challenging the reelection bid of Mayor Evelio Leonardia in Bacolod City in the May 2022 elections. In a press conference on Tuesday (Oct. 5, 2021), Benitez and his running mate, former councilor Caesar Distrito (seated, left), presented their slate composed of 12 candidates for councilor after filing their certificates of candidacy under the Team Asenso Bacolod. (Screenshot from Albee Benitez Facebook Live video)

BACOLOD CITY – Former Negros Occidental 3rd district Rep. Alfredo “Albee” Benitez formalized his bid for mayor of this city in the May 2022 elections by filing his certificate of candidacy (COC) on Tuesday, a day after the local court dismissed a petition to exclude him from the list of registered voters.

Leading the Team Asenso Bacolod, Benitez introduced what he described as his “unity ticket” in bringing change and progress to Bacolod led by Mayor Evelio Leonardia, who is gunning for a third and final term.

“I’m a bit emotional now because I never really thought I would be running for an executive position,” Benitez, a businessman and former Capitol economic affairs consultant, said in a press conference at his family’s ancestral home in Barangay Mandalagan.

To avoid crowding at the local Commission on Elections (Comelec) office, Benitez assigned his lawyer Andrei Norman Saril to submit his COC while the rest of his partymates also did the same with their respective representatives before the presentation of his line-up to the local media streamed via Facebook live.

A lawmaker for three terms until 2019, Benitez, who heads the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) in Negros Occidental and Bacolod City, hurdled two petitions against his voter registration in this provincial capital after garnering favorable decisions from both the Election Registration Board and the Municipal Trial Court in Cities Branch 4.

Benitez, whose previous residential address is in Victorias City, admitted that he did not plan to run for mayor of Bacolod, but the clamor of ordinary people for change made him decide to challenge the incumbent.

“I sought a unity ticket. I wanted a unification of the old and the new, of the pro and the anti. I’d tried to come up with a diversity of candidates that will represent our future. Now, that there are the pro and the anti, and I added one component, the independent. The composition of this diversity is what Bacolod is today,” he said.

Benitez said these candidates joined his slate because they are “one with our mission, our calling, and our objective in what we want to do for Bacolod”.

Joining Benitez’s line-up is a combination of incumbents, returning, and hoping to be first-timers in the City Council.

Former three-term councilor Caesar Distrito, previously a party member of the ruling Grupo Progreso, is running for vice mayor under Team Asenso Bacolod, together with his mother, incumbent councilor Simplicia Distrito.

Aside from the Distritos, former Grupo Progreso members who joined Benitez’s slate are incumbent councilors Al Victor Espino and Bartolome Orola Sr., as well as Pao Sy, daughter and chief of staff of the late councilor Elmer Sy, who passed away earlier this year.

Those seeking a return are former councilors Homer Bais, Sonya Verdeflor, Celia Flor, and Claudio Jesus “Kalaw” Puentevella, son of former mayor and congressman Monico Puentevella, as well as former vice mayor and councilor Jude Thaddeus Sayson.

Businessman Vladimir Gonzales, a former mayoral and vice mayoral candidate, Barangay Sum-ag Sangguniang Kabataan chairman Jason Villarosa, and former Negros Occidental 3rd district board member Patrick Lacson, son of former governor Daniel Lacson, complete Benitez’s line-up. (PNA)