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Manila Bulletin devider devider Ecleo wins congressional seat in Dinagat Islands

Ecleo wins congressional seat in Dinagat Islands

Published May 16, 2019 12:58 pm
By Charissa Luci-Atienza After nine years, another member of the powerful Ecleo political clan has been elected as representative of the lone congressional district of Dinagat Islands. (FACEBOOK/ MANILA BULLETIN) (FACEBOOK/ MANILA BULLETIN) Basilisa Mayor Alan Ecleo of President Duterte’s PDP-Laban, bagged the congressional seat and is set to succeed incumbent Rep. Kaka Bag-ao who won as governor. Based on the Commission on Elections’ partial, unofficial results posted by ABS-CBN’s Halalan 2019, with 100 percent of precincts canvassed or 134 clustered precincts, Ecleo had 26, 746 votes as against his rival, Ann Pinat of Liberal Party who received 26, 258. He won by a margin of only 488 votes. Ecleo is one of eight children of then Ruben Ecleo Sr., long-time mayor of Dinagat, Surigao del Norte and the founder of the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA). The Ecleo patriarch was called by the members of the organisation the “Divine Master”, which was widely perceived as a cult. The last Ecleo clan member who served as representative is Ecleo’s brother, Ruben Jr., who was elected as Dinagat Islands representative during the May 2010 polls. Two years after his election as Dinagat Islands congressman, Ruben Jr., the “supreme master” of cult group Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA), was dropped from the rolls of the members of the House of Representatives after he was sentenced to 31 years in prison for graft and corruption for anomalous projects while he was mayor of San Jose, Dinagat Island, in Surigao del Norte from 1991 to 1994. The elder Ecleo was also found guilty of parricide for killing his wife Alona Bacolod-Ecleo in their home in Cebu City in 2002. He has been on the run for eight years, since a Cebu regional trial court ordered his arrest in April 2011.
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