BESAO, Mountain Province – Mayor Johnson Bantog II owns the distinction of being the lone local chief executive in the province that will be unchallenged in the upcoming May 2019 mid-term elections.
Bantog, some of former Mayor Johnson Bantog, Sr., ran as unopposed for his first term in public office during the May 2016 synchronized national and local elections after availing of the early retirement package of the Philippine National Police (PNP) where he served as a performing junior officer.
“We are grateful to our constituents for continuously bestowing to us their trust and confidence as their leader for the next three years considering their non-fielding of an individual who will challenge me in my bid for re-election in the upcoming election,” Mayor Bantog stressed.
The local chief executive cited that among his significant accomplishments include the increased implementation of infrastructure projects that contributed in improving the inter-barangay, inter-municipality and inter-provincial linkages aside from the significant improvement in the speedy delivery of basic services to the people in the town’s 14 barangays.
Besao has a total registered voters of more or less 5,000 based on the figures from the Commission on elections (Comelec) during the recently concluded May 14, 2018 synchronized barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections.
Mayor Bantog assured his constituents of his unwavering, unrelenting and uncompromising service as his way of reciprocating their trust and confidence to him considering that no one among them emerged to engage him for the upcoming political exercise.
Besao is classified as a fifth-class municipality located in western Mountain Province banking on tourism as one of its economic drivers once the appropriate road networks linking the town with nearby towns in Mountain Province, Ilcoos Sur and Abra shall have been completed.
He added that he will continue to establish the appropriate linkages of the local government with the different local governments and concerned government agencies so that there will be a constant exchanges of best practices in terms of spurring economic growth and infrastructure development aside from ensuring the support of the government in further improving the availability of basic services to the grassroots level, particularly in the remotest villages of the locality.
Earlier, Bantog was able to access funds from the Office of the Presidential Advisers on the Peace process (OPAPP) through the Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan program to improve the Mountain Province to Abra road via Tubo town to help in improving the access of the people from the remote villages of the two provinces to the different urban areas in the said places.
Mayor Bantog also expressed his gratitude to the officials of the different regional offices of the government for providing the needed support in the implementation of various programs and projects of the local government which were geared towards improving the lives of the people in the countryside that with his upcoming fresh mandate, more programs and projects will be cascaded to the municipality for implementation because of the need for more development opportunities in the town where his constituents will be able to gain increased economic activities. By HENT