KADAYAWAN has always been bigger than any one person.
Long before it carried the name we know today, the celebration was rooted in thanksgiving: for the harvest, for the abundance of the land, and for the communities whose cultures have shaped Davao. Over the years, Kadayawan has grown into one of the city's most important expressions of identity, placing our IP and Moro communities at the heart of the celebration.
This is why I hope the Davao City Tourism Operations Office will seriously consider drawing a clear line against partisan political promotion in future Kadayawan performances.
This year's Indak- Indak Open Category showed us why such a line is necessary.
A performance was introduced as a story about a sanctuary where nature and humanity exist in harmony, threatened by forces seeking to exploit its treasures. Its stated message was about safeguarding wildlife, preserving nature, and restoring ecological harmony for future generations.
That is a beautiful and fitting message for Kadayawan.
But when an environmental narrative culminates in chants of “Barug, Sara” and “Si Sara ang Agila,” accompanied by imagery referring to a political personality, the performance crosses into a different territory.
This concern is not about whether one supports or opposes Sara Duterte.
She may be a former mayor of Davao City, the Vice President of the Philippines, and the daughter of our beloved Rodrigo Duterte, the father figure of this city. None of these facts should exempt the principle. In fact, the principle matters precisely because of them.
If it were another politician, I would still raise the same concern.
Kadayawan should be large enough to accommodate difficult ideas. Our artists should be free to speak about environmental destruction, ancestral domain, displacement, cultural erasure, inequality, governance, and the realities confronting the communities we celebrate. Culture does not exist outside politics.
But there is a difference between political commentary and political promotion.
There is a difference between using art to question power and using a cultural stage to elevate a political personality.
Davao City has taken pride in relief assistance bearing words that emphasize that help comes "FROM THE PEOPLE OF DAVAO CITY", rather than turning public service into personal advertising. There is something meaningful in that idea. What belongs to the people should be presented as belonging to the people.
Why should we expect anything less from Kadayawan?
If anything deserves to remain centered on the people, it is this celebration.
Indak-Indak gives performers an extraordinary stage on which to interpret culture, heritage, nature, community, and identity. That stage should not become an opportunity to transform the symbols of Kadayawan into endorsements of individual politicians.
Because once we tolerate it for one personality, we must be prepared to tolerate it for everyone.
Today an eagle can be named Sara and become the actual Sara. Tomorrow another contingent could construct its performance around another mayor, governor, senator, president, candidate, or political family. Eventually, the competition risks becoming a contest not only of cultural interpretation, but of who can most effectively weave political allegiance into cultural spectacle.
That would diminish something we have spent decades building.
I therefore respectfully urge the Davao City Tourism Operations Office and the organizers of Kadayawan to consider explicit provisions in future competition guidelines prohibiting partisan political endorsements, campaign slogans, promotional representations of political personalities, and similar forms of political advertising within official competitive performances.
This does not require making Kadayawan apolitical.
It's quite the opposite. Let our artists confront the politics of land. Let them speak about environmental destruction. Let them question injustice. Let them tell stories of Indigenous survival, Moro identity, displacement, development, memory, and belonging.
But let the communities remain the protagonists.
Kadayawan is our thanksgiving for abundance. It is our celebration of culture, heritage, harvest, nature, and the peoples who have given Davao much of its identity.
They deserve the stage, the final image and they should never become the backdrop for the celebration of one person.
Let Kadayawan remain for the people of Davao, and for the communities it was created to honor.
– Glenn M. Agallano
