Mayors Corner

Luis Paña Malaluan was Kidapawan's Eighth elected mayor, and was Kidapawan's first city mayor.

A successful doctor, Malaluan started his long tenure as Mayor in 1994 after winning an election dispute against Joseph Evangelista. For over a decade following that he dominated Kidapawan politics, winning three consecutive terms as mayor before trading places with his vice mayor Rudolfo Gantuangco in 2004.

As mayor, Malaluan will be remembered for playing a key role in making the then municipality of Kidapawan into a city in 1998.

Malaluan died in office as vice mayor in 2008. He was 59.

Florante Respicio was Kidapawan's EDSA mayor

Born in Kidapawan in 1946 to Alfredo Respicio and Cesaria Lucas, Florante is the eldest of ten siblings. His parents migrated from Ilocos during the Second World War, acquiring property in Saguing.

Florante studied elementary, high school, and the early parts of college before he finished his degree in Commerce in Davao. While studying, Florante learned to do business and managed to fund his own education.

He returned to Kidapawan in the 1970s, setting up an insurance agency. Around the same time, his younger brother Zafiro was rising as a politician, becoming a prominent opposition Assemblyman during the Marcos administration (Zafiro would later become Mayor of Davao, and would be instrumental in the rise of Rodrigo Duterte, his Vice Mayor). Through Zafiro, the Respicios became founding and core members of what would become PDP Laban.

Florante found himself leading anti-Marcos protests in Kidapawan, and was in Luneta during the Tagumpay ng Bayan Rally on February, 1986.

Within that same year, EDSA 1 happened, and Marcos was overthrown. The new Aquino government went about appointing OIC local officials as Corazon Aquino declared a revolutionary government. During consultations among members of the now incumbent anti-Marcos movement, Florante found himself being nominated OIC Mayor of Kidapawan. He was appointed on March, 1986, replacing Augusto Gana, who had been mayor since 1971.

Respicio's term was short but eventful. He oversaw a purge of Marcos-era employees in the Municipio, and went about streamlining the town's bureaucracy, abolishing many redundancies. He was president of the Mayors' league in Cotabato, and played an active role in the peace and order situation in the province, using his center-Left credentials to convince many NPAs to give up arms. It was also under his term that exploration and the first drilling in what would today be the geothermal powerplant in Ilomavis would happen, although his term ended before Kidapawan entered into any agreement with PNOC.

Florante stepped down in 1987 to contest the elections, running against Augusto Gana and Sol Jubilan. Domingo Landicho was appointed caretaker mayor as the elections unfolded. Gana would emerge victorious, and would return to the Municipio in 1988.

Alfonso 'Ponching' O. Angeles Sr, Kidapawan's first mayor and one of the town's and province's founding figures.

Born in Janiuay, Iloilo in 1912, Angeles was already recorded being a teacher in the undivided Cotabato Province by 1935.

The 1952 Cotabato Guidebook records him being 'Mayor of the Upper Cotabato Sector' in 1942, during the administrative turmoil of the Second World War. The details of this appointment are unclear, but he is the first person in Kidapawan recorded to have held the title of 'mayor.'

He would be elected as Kidapawan's first Municipal Mayor by 1947 when the Municipal District was converted into a Municipality, and he would lead the town until 1955. He would return to the Municipio as Mayor in 1964, before resigning in 1967 to take a seat in the Provincial Board.

Lorenzo Abear Saniel was mayor of

 Kidapawan from 1957 to 1959, Kidapawan's seventh mayor, and third after its foundation as a Municipality. He was vice mayor under mayor Gil Gadi when Gadi resigned to run for the lone Congressional seat of the then undivided Cotabato Province.

Born in Argao, Cebu in 1890, Saniel moved to Mindanao in 1913 as part of the American agricultural colonies, first arriving in Pikit. He 

moved to Kidapawan in 1935, where he wo

uld settle. Part of Kidapawan's first generation of politicians, Saniel was the first politician to occupy all three municipal-level elected offices. He was nearly killed by the Japanese during the War, but lived on to the ripe age of 90. He died in 1980.

(Photo courtesy of the Saniel Family and of Josefa Jamilarin)