FORMER Vice Governor Oscar Lambino has affirmed that the provincial board will have to wait until 2016 before it can change the name of the present Governor Aguedo F. Agbayani Park.

Lambino, speaking during the weekly Kapehan sa Lenox on Tuesday, said the proposed ordinance before the provincial board seeking to rename the Agbayani Park into Governors Park and Gallery cannot be implemented under the law.

It was under Lambino’s watch as presiding officer of the provincial board when Ordinance No. 119, series of 2005 naming the park in front of the provincial capitol as Governor Aguedo F. Agbayani Park was passed.

The Local Government Code of the Philippines prohibits the renaming of public places within a 10-year period.

Lambino said the 2005 ordinance passed through all the required legislative processes and no objection was raised whatsoever during its passage.

Second District Rep. Victor Agbayani, son of the late governor after whom the park was named and himself a former governor, earlier expressed annoyance over the provincial board’s proposed renaming.

A fuming Agbayani said the legislators advocating the new ordinance are “ignorant of the law’ and are playing “transactional politics”.

On the other hand, Provincial Board Member Alfonso Bince Jr., author of the proposed ordinance, said the proposed edict is not an affront to the memory of the late governor but to accommodate the request of relatives of other late governors of Pangasinan who also contributed to the progress of the province.

Bince also questioned whether the ordinance naming Agbayani Park was in order because it was passed less than five years after the death of the elder Agbayani.

Nonetheless, Bince said he understands that it is the duty of Rep. Agbayani, as a good son, to fight for the retention of his father’s name for the park.—LM

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