Friday, July 11, 2003
Vice guv wants bikini opens regulated
By Adrian Sedillo
AN IRATE Negros Oriental Vice Governor Jose Baldado has nothing pleasant to say about the holding of bikini opens in Dumaguete City and is asking the City Council to pass an ordinance regulating the activity.
"They serve only to satisfy the sexual desire," he said on Tuesday.
Baldado was reacting to a blind item aired over a local radio station that the vice governor felt alluded to him.
Baldado, it can be recalled, triggered investigations into the pornographic Dumaguete Sex Scandal video.
The blind item allegedly questioned his moral standard for being seen "salivating" while watching skimpily-clad bikini open participants in one of the city's nightspots.
The nightspot where the show was held is reportedly owned by a city councilor.
The vice governor called the blind item "malicious."
Baldado clarified he did not promote that show and that he was not there for any deliberate reason.
But he, however, admitted he was invited to serve as chairman of the board of judges at the bikini open last June 28 at El Camino along the city's north boulevard.
Baldado said it was his first time to watch a bikini open.
However, when the show turned distasteful, he withdrew as chairman of the contest's board of judges and left.
Baldado said he was disappointed when an exposed cheek of one of the participants' buttocks was photographed during the contest.
He said he would give a copy of the shot to Dumaguete City Vice Mayor William Ablong for his study on whether to allow the holding of a bikini open in the city again.
Baldado said he also wants to know if the picture, which he describes as going beyond the borderline of art, could pass the city's moral standards.
A bikini open that features indecent women could be easily abused and that it is only aimed at "satisfying the sexual desire" of the audience, he added.
