The Leyte Roots of the VP and speaker | The Freeman

I was recently reminded of the 2013 earthquake and typhoon that hit Visayas because Mindanao has been rocked by earthquakes in the past few weeks, and thoughts of Yolanda also recalled the ongoing issue between Vice President Sara Duterte and Speaker Martin Romualdez. Both have roots to Leyte, which Typhoon Yolanda devastated in 2013. During the 10th anniversary commemoration of Yolanda this year, the Duterte and Romualdez surnames have been trending as comparisons were made between how, in 2013, then mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte immediately visited Leyte and sent assistance and personnel just days after Yolanda with the usual “from the people of Davao” emblazoned on the relief goods, as opposed to Speaker Romualdez’s recent photos of relief goods and other projects which prominently display his and his wife’s faces and names.

In his unsuccessful 2016 senatorial bid, Romualdez was criticized for using Yolanda as a campaign issue, that Romualdez had “no right to use Yolanda because both the national and local governments were unable to bring immediate response when Yolanda hit Leyte”, and that it was “disappointing to see ads of Romualdez which claimed he was an effective leader during the disaster.”

Both families have a deeper history in Leyte. Sara’s father was born in Maasin City, whose own maternal grandparents were from Liloan and Maasin City, all in Southern Leyte; Sara’s maternal grandfather was born in Hilongos, Leyte, whose mother was from a very long line of Hilongosnons. Meanwhile, the Romualdezes had been in Leyte for three generations before the speaker was born. His great-grandfather, Daniel Romualdez, moved to Leyte in 1872 together with his wife, Trinidad Lopez, the daughter of Spanish friar and a local from Basey, Samar. This line connects Speaker Romualdez genealogically to Leyte, as both his mother and paternal grandmother were from Luzon.

Daniel Romualdez was accused of helping in the capture of Fr. Donato Guimbaolibot, the much-beloved parish priest of Balangiga, whom Americans suspected as the mastermind behind the infamous massacre in 1901. Guimbaolibot’s arrest was influenced by dirty local politics involving Romualdez; to prove his family’s