Isko visits late mother’s Visayas hometown

Manila Mayor Isko Moreno yesterday visited his mother’s hometown in Allen, Northern Samar as he touted his Visayan roots despite faring poorly in the latest Pulse Asia survey conducted in Samar island provinces.

In a meeting with residents, Moreno said that although he was raised in Tondo, Manila, his late mother Rosario was born in Allen and his father Joaquin in San Joaquin, Iloilo.

“I may be very Tagalog because I was born in Tondo where I worked as a scavenger, sidecar boy, and where I got my break as an actor,” Moreno said in Filipino.

“But I cannot deny that the blood running in my veins is 100 percent Bisaya,” he said.

Moreno said he wanted to give tribute to his late mother by visiting the Samar provinces first in his campaign in the Visayas.

He promised to be the first “Waray candidate” to develop the province, which he said was neglected by the national government.

Northern Samar has a 23.1 percent poverty incidence among families in the first semester of 2021, making it one of the country’s poorest provinces.

The nearby province of Samar has a 30 percent poverty incidence, while Eastern Samar has 36 percent.

Three in every 10 families in the Eastern Visayas are poor, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.

“This is the first time you will have a Waray candidate. Whatever the dynamics in the local, what is important is we are united in the national. I am here asking that you help the child of this town,” Moreno said in Filipino.

He said he has a lot of “catching up to do” in introducing himself in the Visayas, where he got a low rating in the latest Pulse Asia survey, Aksyon Demokratiko party chair Ernest Ramel earlier said.