DAVAO CITY—This city’s Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio said Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco visited her here last week to seek her support over the tussle for speakership of the Lower House.
“He intimated that there will be a speakership vote and he sought for my help as the chairperson of HNP [Hugpong Ng Pagbabago] with regard to the votes of the three HNP congressmen from Davao region,” Duterte-Carpio, daughter of President Duterte, said in a news statement issued on Monday.
She stressed Velasco “came to Davao City to personally meet me and discuss the HNP.”
“I told him that HNP was created to propel unity and development in Davao region and assist the administration of President Duterte,” Duterte-Carpio said.
The mayor said she “emphasized” to Velasco that HNP would respect the term-sharing agreement as ordered by the President last year and “reiterated” to Velasco “that the party fully supports Presidential Proclamation 1027,” which schedules a special congressional session from October 13 to 16.
Duterte-Carpio issued the statement after a social-media post showed her and Velasco in a photograph in Davao City. The mayor also just came back from a weeklong medical leave.
Curfew reimposed anew
Meanwhile, the mayor reimposed a night-to-dawn curfew here until December 31 this year for several reasons, including the slowing down of transmission of Covid-19 and giving more elbow room to security forces to pound on criminal and terrorism activities.
Executive Order 55, “an order imposing curfew and regulating other activities until December 31, 2020,” was signed and issued on Monday to reimpose the curfew from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m.
She said the curfew would like to pick up from many accounts of Covid-19 patients that they likely got their infection after work, and to help slow down the transmission that may be likely spread anew “due to after-work non-essential activities during the Christmas season.”
The EO said the reimposition of curfew would also give security forces more muscle flexibility to ward off criminality, increase surveillance, especially on coastal areas, which have been the recent places of smugglers to drop off illegal drugs.
The intelligence work must also heighten as the city remained one of the likely targets for terror attacks, she added.
A ban on the sale of liquor is also imposed during curfew hours.
Exemptions would be granted to medical personnel, workers in companies whose work shift goes way into the curfew hours, persons in subsistence and economic fishing activities, and those needing emergency treatment.