IIT hosts Region 10 launch of Kilusang Pagbabago
by Rex Godinez Ortega
(Photo credit: A. Ladayo, Sr.)
“I hope people would understand that change is indeed coming.”
This is what MSU-IIT Chancellor Sukarno D. Tanggol told the estimated 6,000 persons who gathered at the Institute gymnasium on Saturday (October 15) as he welcomed them to the Region 10 launch of the Kilusang Pagbabago movement.
“We should support Duterte’s call for change,” Tanggol said to the huge crowd who had come from four provinces to become part of the grassroots-based movement.
The Kilusang Pagbabago is an initiative that targets the most basic level of society – the local communities. It was created to support the changes being effected by the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte.
The movement is also viewed to serve as a partner of the Duterte administration that would guarantee basic government services reach, and government programs benefit the masses.
Duterte’s Cabinet Secretary Leoncio B. Evasco, Jr. was on hand for the launching of the Kilusang Pagbabago movement that was attended by local government officials (mayors and councilors); barangay officials; community leaders; multi-sectoral groups; and grassroots organizations.
The attendees came from the provinces of Bukidnon, Misamis Oriental, Misamis Occidental, and Lanao Norte, and the cities of Iligan and Cagayan de Oro.
Evasco has been going around the Philippines lately swearing in community leaders and volunteers as members of the movement.
After he received the results of the various consultations conducted in the grassroots communities all over Region 10, Evasco swore in those present at the gym into the Kilusang Pagbabago organization in a mass oath-taking ceremony.
Evasco is a former rebel-priest and mayor of a Bohol municipality.
He served as Duterte’s chief-of-staff in Davao, and then went on to handle the latter’s presidential campaign.
The campus launch of the Kilusang Pagbabago movement in Region 10 was co-organized by IIT’s Institute for Peace and Development in Mindanao (IPDM) in coordination with the Department of Extension (DE) and the Center for Local Governance Studies (CLGS) of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Extension (OVCRE).
IPDM officer-in-charge Prof. Mark Anthony J. Torres, Phd said that the Kilusang Pagbabago is the banner program of the newly-created Office of Participatory Governance of Malacanang.