By Abigail C. Malalis and Bobby Lagsa
Thursday, April 25, 2013
FLAGS have been flown at half-mast in Camiguin Island as its congressman and 1971 constitutional convention member Pedro Palarca Romualdo died on Wednesday morning at St. Luke’s Hospital in Quezon City. He was 77 years old.
The veteran lawmaker succumbed to pneumonia at 2:35 a.m., Camiguin provincial police commander Senior Superintendent Wilfredo Cayat said.
Engineer Felicisimo Garcia of the provincial planning and development office said that the people are mourning for their congressman.
“Thank you for mourning with us, we considered him (Romualdo) as the father of Camiguin province…his efforts and leadership leads to the development of what Camiguin is today,” Garcia said in a text message.
Romualdo’s remains will arrive today, Thursday, from Manila, according to Garcia.
Romualdo, who is running in the 2013 midterm elections for the lone district of the island province under the Nationalist People’s Coalition, started as a janitor at the Provincial Capitol of Misamis Oriental in the 1950s.
Romualdo worked his way to the top while taking up law at the University of the East, and passed the bar exam in 1965 while working as a credit investigator of the now defunct National Cottage Industry Authority (NACIDA) bank.
In 1971, he was a delegate to the constitutional convention and ran for public office and served from 1987 to 1998 as congressman and served as governor of the province from 1998 to 2007.
Romualdo is a vice chairperson of the House committee on justice and a member of eight other committees.
Romualdo is survived by his wife, former Mambajao town Mayor Araceli Romualdo and sons Camiguin Governor Jurdin Jesus Romualdo and Noordin Epigenio Romualdo, who is the incumbent mayor of Mambajao.
