Dinagyang Foundation Mulls Committee to Screen Tribes

For next year’s festival, the Iloilo Dinagyang Foundation Inc. (IDFI) plans to screen the tribes that intend to join the ati competition.

The screening will ensure the tribes’ “capability and competitiveness,” said Dr. Jaime Manila, chairman of the tribes committee.

A screening committee is being planned.

This year’s edition of the festival was marred by accusations of unpreparedness directed against two of the competing ati tribes, Himala and Hamili.

While Dinagyang is a religious-cultural activity, Manila said the city government wants a world-class presentation.

For three years in a row now, the Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines has picked Dinagyang Festival, a tourist-drawer, as the country’s “Best Tourism Event.”

Tribes that fail to show “competitive performance” during the screening will not be allowed to join the ati competition, Manila said.

In this year’s Dinagyang, the foundation gave financial subsidy to the competing tribes. Still, Manila said, some of them failed to come up with competitive performances.

“This only showed that financial subsidy does not guarantee good performance,” he said.
Five days before the Dinagyang ati competion last month, no less than City Tourism Officer Benito Jimena recommended that Hamili and Himala be dropped from the ati competition.

He said the tribes’ performance during the opening salvo on January 16 showed that they were not prepared at all.

“They will jeopardize the world-class (festival),” warned Jimena.

The foundation, however, decided to allow the two tribes to participate. The judges eventually ranked them at the bottom two of all the 17 tribes that competed.

“People come here to watch (good performances)…we owe it to them to give them something grand,” Ricardo Andrada, the foundation vice chairman, had said.

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