Pantaleon Pelayo

Pantaleon Pelayo was a Filipino lawyer and politician.

He was born on August 31, 1901 in the municipality of Zamboanga (later Zamboanga City). His early schooling was in Zamboanga. In 1921, he finished high school as class salutatorian. He studied at the Philippine Law School, graduated in 1925 and passed the bar examination the same year. The following year he saild for Davao and immediately set up a law office. His competence and integrity as a law practitioner prompted the head of the Nacionalista Party then to nominate him as a candidate for the Constitutional Convention along with another prominent lawyer, Rafael Castillo. Both won by a wide margin.

In 1940, when President Manuel Quezon came to Davao to inaugurate the Sayre Highway, he was “shocked” or rather “pleasantly surprised” when Preident announced without giving prior notice that he was appointing a young local lawyer to be the next Mayor of Davao City. At the time he was the youngest City Mayor appointed.

During World War II, Pantaleon Pelayo, fearing for his life because of his anti-Japanese speeches, went underground, joined the guerillas and was appointed Civil Affairs Officer of the 10th military district for the unoccupied areas of Mindanao.

After the war, he was appointed Mayor of Davao City by President Osmeña. On his shoulder fell the task of reorganizing the civil government, and the difficult task to rebuild and rehabilitate from the rubble of war.

After several months as the city was coming back to normal, President Osmeña appointed him as Mayor of Zamboanga City.

When Ramon Magsaysay became President in 1954, he was appointed Undersecretary of Labor and soon became acting Secretary. As such, he stressed, “Any doubt in the interpretation of the Labor law should e resolved in favor of working man because the Minimum Wage Law was enacted for his benefit.”

Labor lost a champion when he requested to be with the judiciary due to too much political pressure. He was appointed Judge of the Court of First Instance in Ilo-ilo in 1955, a position he held up to hi death in 1963. His wife, the former Luz Valderosa of Bacolod died in 1982.

The Pelayo children are: Pantaleon Jr., a lawyer (deceased) former Davao City Councilor and Napolcom Regional Director; Benjamin, RTC judge of Pasig; Ramon (deceased), a lawyer; Natividad P. Ong; David, a lawyer (deceased) and Victoria P. Gestuvo.

New Philippines: A Book on the Building Up of a New Nation (1934), by Felixberto Bustos and Abelardo Fajardo (p. 216)

Our Delegates to the Constitutional Assembly: English-Spanish (1935, p. 455-456)

Cornejo’s Commonwealth Directory of the Philippines (1939), by Miguel Cornejo (p. 2008)

Who's Who in the Philippines: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men of the Philippines, Volume II 1940-1941 (1940), by Franz J. Weissblatt (p. 142, Image 190)