Balaoan swears in new lady mayor

Balaoan, La Union- In a historic first, the municipality of Balaoan finally gets to have a lady mayor breaking the decades old tradition of town leadership dominated by male political leaders in this first class municipality of northern La Union.

Amidst thousands of supporters, Atty. Aleli U. Concepcion took her oath of office last June 27, 2016 before new La Union Provincial Governor Francisco Emmanuel “Pacoy” R. Ortega III at the Balaoan Farmers Civic Center.

The inauguration of the town’s first lady mayor ushers in a new leadership armed with the idealism of the youth and the wisdom of elderly leaders who engineered the progressive strides of the municipality in the last nine years and made it now an envy of other places and peoples in the province and beyond.

In a strongly worded inaugural speech that summarized the scars and strife left by the last elections, Mayor Aleli Concepcion exhorted the mammoth crowd of well-wishers to strongly support her administration by vowing to continue with the reforms that were already started by the immediate past administration, capitalizing on its gains and instituting more progressive reforms to give the best for the people of Balaoan.

During the last elections, the standard bearer of Team Aleli, Mayor Aleli Concepcion handily trounced her opponent, former Vice Mayor Gerard Jose G. Ostrea in an electoral contest seen by many as the most lopsided exercise in the town’s political history, this time favoring the Concepcions. Mayor Aleli Concepcion gathered 15,880 votes against the measly 2,760 votes of former Vice Mayor Gerard Jose G. Ostrea. On the other hand, immediate past Mayor and incumbent Vice Mayor Atty. Al-Fred O. Concepcion cornered 15,452 votes while his opponent, former Mayor and Board Member Joaquin C. Ostrea, Jr. managed to tally only 3,249 votes.