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Vice gubernatorial election | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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12 out of 15 seats in the Pangasinan Provincial Board 8 seats needed for a majority | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Local elections will be held in the province of Pangasinan on May 8, 2028 as part of the 2028 Philippine general election. Pangasinan voters will elect a governor, a vice governor, 6 members of the House of Representatives that will represent the 6 congressional districts of the province, and 12 out of 15 members of the Pangasinan Provincial Board. The officials elected will assume their respective offices on June 30, 2028, for a three-year-long term.
Ramon Guico III was re-elected as Governor of Pangasinan in the May 12, 2025 local elections, receiving 881,307 votes against former Governor Amado Espino III’s 784,470 votes. Guico won by strong margins across several districts. [1] His running mate, Vice Governor Mark Lambino, was also re-elected, and five of six incumbent congressional representatives retained their seats, while Gina de Venecia won the 4th District seat. [2]
The Espino family has experienced successive political defeats since 2019. In the 2025 elections, Guico again defeated Pogi Espino by nearly 100,000 votes, the family also lost their influence in the Abante Pangasinan-Ilokano (API) Partylist, alongside other Pangasinense-led partylists said to have been overwhelmed by the financially dominant Solid North Party and other strongholds. Local races in Bugallon and Bautista further weakened the Espinos, with William Dy and Vice Mayor Rosemarie Gacutan defeating Jumel Espino and Jerome Vic Espino, respectively. [3]
Local elections in the Philippines are held every second Monday of May starting in 1992 and every three years thereafter. Single-seat positions (governor, vice governor, and House representative) are elected via first-past-the-post-voting. The governor and vice governor are elected by the province at-large, while the House representative and provincial board members are elected per district.
provincial board elections are done via plurality block voting; Pangsinan is divided into six districts, with each district sending two board members. There are three other ex officio seats, the president of the Philippine Councilors’ League, the president of the Association of Barangay Captains, and the president of the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) Provincial Federation; these will be determined later in the year at the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections.
The following are serving a successive three-year term and are barred from seeking reelection (2019, 2022, 2025):
Vice Governor
Provincial Board Members
Mayors
Super Typhoon Uwan (Fung-Wong) Response
The provincial government of Pangasinan declared a state of calamity on November 11, 2025 following the severe impacts of Super Typhoon Uwan (Fung-wong). [4] According to Pangasinan's disaster office, about 200,914 families, or 670,422 individuals in 41 municipalities and 4 cities, were affected. [4] Initial damage estimates reported by the Pangasinan PDRRMO reached PHP 411 million, with PHP 234 million attributed to agriculture (high-value crops, palay, corn, fishery, livestock) and PHP 176.5 million to infrastructure (roads, bridges, pavements). [5] The DSWD provided more than PHP 15.6 million in emergency cash transfers (ECT) to affected families: notably, PHP 13.757 million went to 2,613 residents of Binmaley, Pangasinan whose homes were partially damaged by storm surge. [6] The destruction forced over 4,000 families into temporary shelters; 4,220 houses were reported totally destroyed, while 12,233 were partially damaged. [5] Typhoon Uwan also disrupted fishery production: according to ABS-CBN, the supply of bangus (milkfish) fingerlings in Pangasinan was affected. [7]
Pangasinan 2nd District Representative Mark Cojuangco drew heavy backlash online after his comment on X about flood victims, asking: “Bakit kasi sa flood plain gumawa ng tirahan? Takaw sakuna.” [8] He later defended the remark, saying that people “always have a choice” regarding where they build their homes and that engineering realities must be considered. [9]
Actress Bela Padilla criticized Cojuangco’s statement, saying:
“Respectfully, you don’t start giving swimming lessons to a drowning man, sir. You save him first. Why didn’t the LGUs stop them from building there in the first place? Common folk don’t know where they can or can’t build. I mean-look at Slater Young.” [10]
Padilla further argued that ordinary people cannot be expected to understand technical hazards like floodplains, criticizing systemic failures and even pointing to controversies such as Slater Young’s project. [11]
A bill to reapportion the province of Pangasinan into eight legislative districts (up from the current six) is under consideration. The proposal, put forward by Abono Partylist Representative Robert Estrella, is based on the province’s increasing population (over 3.16 million as of the 2020 Census) and the constitutional principle that each legislative district should have at least 250,000 people. [12] Under the draft plan in House Bill No. 05311, the new boundaries would allocate specific towns and cities into the expanded eight-district scheme. However, local officials emphasise that the measure is “legal but needs further consultations” and has not been given priority in the current legislative agenda. [13]