(NOTE: From 1986 to 1992, I served as documentarist and historian of the Movement for Provincehood of Biliran (MPB). The MPB was essentially an informal volunteer organization of concerned Navaleños who decided to involve the ordinary citizens in the quest to elevate the former Subprovince of Biliran into a regular province, primarily through a signature campaign.

The MPB started out in 1986 as a group that founded the Biliran Clarion, a fortnightly that became the first newspaper in Biliran. It came out with only a few issues, but these sufficiently served as forum for ideas pertaining to the provincehood movement.

A few people composed the core group of the MPB. The late Alberto M. Bago and the late Tomas Santolorin managed the early day-to-day activities of the movement. Atty. Antonio Abilar, Ben Granali and I served as spokesmen of the movement through our respective columns in the Clarion, and Atty. Redentor Villordon, who was then a law student based in Cebu, supervised the publication of the newspaper. These are about the people I feel free to name here, though there were other reliables. We usually held our meetings (drinking really) at Merlinda’s Carenderia, in front of Naval’s bus station, where Boy Cababan, the proprietor, was our regular host. Our other hangout was the Hotricano ancestral house where the late Primo Hotricano played host. Local people familiar with these two places will understand our type of crowd.

Of course, former Gov. Joe Gonzales was also in the MPB, the "springboard" of his political career. It served his political purpose. As OIC-governor, he backed up the publication of the Clarion and the signature campaign with the staff and resources of the subprovincial government. But after he was duly elected governor in 1988, he outcast all the MPB core group members, one at a time.

I deem it fit to review this one successful political quest, which had been owned up by various self-serving liars. A lesson must be stated here. Many personalities who now want to rule the province, including several presently occupying elective positions, campaigned or worked against the provincehood of Biliran. Another group of pretenders, now trying to act like saviors, were virtual outsiders who made their presence felt only after the struggle was over. - ROB.)

Republic Act No. 2141, "An Act Creating the Subprovince of Biliran," was enacted and approved on April 8, 1959. The subprovince comprised of seven municipalities of Biliran Island -- Almeria, Biliran, Cabucgayan, Caibiran, Culaba, Kawayan, and Naval -- and the island municipality of Maripipi. R.A. No. 2141 provided for the positions of lieutenant-governor as subprovincial executive and of a special board member to represent the interests of the subprovince in the provincial board of Leyte (but who has no vote except as regards to matters concerning the subprovince), and the organization of a regular highway engineering district. It also provided that, for legal and practical purposes, the Subprovince of Biliran was to be considered as a province.

The creation of the Subprovince of Biliran was the brainchild of the late Congressman Marcelino R. Veloso of Leyte’s Third Congressional District.

Ten years later, on June 21, 1969, Republic Act No. 5977, "An Act Amending Republic Act No. 2141, entitled `An Act Creating the Subprovince of Biliran’," was enacted and approved. It changed the nomenclature of "lieutenant-governor" to "governor" and provided him with all the executive powers of a provincial governor. It provided for a staff complement for a treasury office and an office of the auditor for the subprovince. Most importantly, it provided that "all funds accruing to the Subprovince of Biliran shall be expended for its exclusive benefit."

During the decade prior to the enactment of the niggardly RA No. 5977, Biliran was overtaken by the legislative creation of the province of Southern Leyte (in 1959), and the division of Samar Island into three constituent provinces (in 1968). In the same period, the pre-martial law Congress had also enacted legislations elevating Biliran’s fellow subprovinces of Catanduanes, Camiguin and Siquijor into full-fledged provinces.

Congressman Veloso, who was the majority floor leader of the House of Representatives in 1969, presumably refused to complicate his political career by resolving the anomalous political set-up in his poor and divided-and-ruled district. Otherwise, he could have been as kind to Biliran as he had been to other former subprovinces elsewhere.

Why did Congressman Veloso create a political anomaly called the Subprovince of Biliran? Hindsight tells us that he appeared scared of the modernizing and consciousness-raising influence of the 25-year Franciscan Mission in Biliran Island, which started in 1957. To avert a potential political disaster in his district, he presumably concocted an ingenious scheme a la Machiavelli.

On August 27, 1971, Republic Act No. 6415, "An Act Creating Certain Positions in the Subprovince of Biliran, Province of Leyte, Amending for the Purpose Republic Act No. 2141, as Amended," was enacted and approved. It created several other provincial offices and provided that appointees to said offices "shall exercise such powers and perform such duties as are vested in their respective offices by law as if the Subprovince of Biliran were a different and separate province (underscoring supplied).

Hindsight tells us that RA No. 6415 was the unkindest cut imposed on the Subprovince of Biliran. The "as if a province" provision for Biliran created mixed signals to different national agencies, most of which did not provide full province-level services for Biliran until now because of its anomalous status as a level of government. Moreover, the law ensured that, while Biliran would have to spend for its own upkeep without material assistance from the mother province of Leyte, its own legislation would have to be approved by the Provincial Board of Leyte. A careful political observer would notice that this is "internal colonization" in its worst form, a classic case study on "how to govern without cost."

The first and last election for the position of provincial governor of Biliran during the Marcos Regime was held in November 1971. During the first local elections after Martial Law in 1980, the people of Biliran voted only for a governor of Leyte. The incumbent governor of Biliran was retained in his position without popular vote.

Biliran Subprovince narrowly escaped automatic abolition with the enactment of Batas Pambansa Blg. 337, the Local Government Code of 1983. Atty. Felimon Fernandez, the opposition assemblyman from Cebu, saw an onerous provision as a member of the committee that cleared the provisions of that Code. Section 198 provided that subprovinces (only Biliran and Guimaras in Iloilo have this status) "were to be deemed abolished upon the approval of the Code." Atty. Fernandez thought that this was unfair, and he proposed that a compromise clause must be allowed in the law. And that he got: "unless otherwise provided by law."

Following the EDSA Revolution in February 1986, new local government executives were installed. Atty. Jose C. Gonzales assumed the position of OIC-Governor of Biliran.

One of the first acts of Gov. Gonzales was the launching of the "Movement for the Provincehood of Biliran." The movement in 1986 was essentially a signature campaign aimed at petitioning Pres. Corazon Aquino to issue an executive order, by virtue of her emergency powers, formally recognizing Biliran as a separate province. I drafted the position paper with the help of Atty. Abilar and this was submitted, together with the generated signatures, through the Ministry of Local Government (MLG).

The MLG finally acted on the 1986 Biliran provincehood petition sometime in March 1987. The late MLG Minister Jaime Ferrer, in endorsing the petition to Pres. Aquino, merely noted that the subject of the Biliran petition was something that can be taken up by the future Congress.

Rep. Alberto Veloso (LDP, Third District of Leyte) filed House Bill No. 485, "An Act Separating the Subprovince of Biliran from the Province of Leyte and Constituting or Converting It into a Separate, Independent, Regular Province, to be known as the Province of Biliran," in the House of Representatives. H.B. No. 485 was co-authored by the four other congressmen from the province of Leyte.

Rep. Veloso’s bill was complemented by supporting resolutions and documents containing over 40,000 signatures generated during a second-round signature campaign in 1987 and 1988 by the Movement for the Provincehood of Biliran. These were handcarried to Congress by Leochito Mission, a provincial employee who also attended congressional committee hearings.

Later, the senators and congressmen were separately sent a copy each of the revised position paper for Biliran provincehood.

The signatures and documents were separately strengthened by the endorsements of several senators (e.g., Gonzales, Shahani, Pimentel), the Regional Development Council (RDC) of Region VIII, the League of Provincial Governors, the League of Sangguniang Panlalawigans, the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Leyte, and the Association of Barangay Councils of the different towns of Biliran.

Rep. Veloso claimed that his bill was incorporated in Section 462 on "Existing Subprovinces" in the Local Government Code of 1991, which was signed into law by Pres. Corazon C. Aquino on October 10, 1991.

However, reliable grapevines had it that he fought against the passage of his pro-forma bill to the very end. As a "last-ditch" effort, he allegedly succeeded in influencing seven out of eight mayors of Biliran towns to sign a manifesto, claiming that their constituents were not in favor of the provincehood of Biliran.

This manifesto was presumably ignored in Congress (especially by key members of the Senate who had given the MPB their word), which apparently gave more credence to the people’s signatures and other institutional endorsements.

Under Sec. 462 of the new Local Government Code, the Subprovince of Biliran "shall be converted into a regular province subject to the favorable results of a plebiscite which will be held simultaneously with the synchronized elections" in the province of Leyte and the Subprovince of Biliran on May 11, 1992.

Official results of the plebiscite conducted with the May 11, 1992 elections in Biliran and its mother province of Leyte showed that three-out-of-four Leyteños approved of the proposed conversion of Biliran into a separate, regular province.

Of the total votes cast in the plebiscite, 157,808 or 77.5 percent were "yes" votes. Only 45,851 votes or 22.5 percent were cast against the proposal.

Rep. Veloso was reelected to Congress in 1992. But his "No" vote campaign to derail the provincehood of Biliran failed.