TAYUG – This eastern Pangasinan town celebrates its annual town fiesta in an atmosphere of uneasy peace brought about largely by the brewing tension between its two political ruling families.

Vice Mayor Janet Zaragosa, in media interviews, said she is fully aware that her townmates deserve to enjoy the thrills of a fiesta that they used to have but now admits the annual festivity is subdued because of a fear among most residents that violence could erupt anytime.

The Zaragosa family’s running politics-bred feud with Mayor Carlos Trece Mapili that has seen several of their bodyguards getting wounded in armed clashes the past months has prompted the Philippine National Police to double its watch on the town.

Zaragosa, daughter of the late former Mayor Guerrero Zaragosa who was himself killed by assailants three years ago, said she has done her part towards helping find means to stabilize the situation by proposing “a kind of peace pact” with the municipal mayor, a gesture however supposedly quickly rejected by the latter for unclear reasons.

Efforts by media to get Mapili’s side on the issue has proved negative till deadline.

Zaragosa said she has, by her own count, proposed the peace pact three times already in a bid to defuse growing tension but that the mayor has not responded favorably.

She said she agrees to some suggestions that both sides forego with their phalanx of bodyguards and just seek at least two authorized police escorts and their trusted drivers in moving around.

“Kung minsan nga talaga, sila-sila mga bodyguards nagkakairingan at naglalaban-laban kaya ganito ang nangyayari,” (Sometimes really, it’s the bodyguards who are at loggerheads and tend to fight each other leading to this situation), she noted in analyzing the volatile situation between her people and the mayor’s supporters.

A couple of months back, some alleged bodyguards of Zaragosa who were implicated in the shooting of some Mapili men earlier were arrested by a police team while loitering near the town hall bearing handguns. (BFH)