Palawan and Cuyo

  

Commonwealth of Palawan and Cuyo Lalawigan ng Tondo
1946-1996
Flag Coat of arms
Motto: "Bagong hari, bagong urali" (Old Tondolese) (New king, new character)
Anthem: "For the Love of Our Union"
Status	K.S. Crown dependency (1946-71) K.S. Unincorporated, organized territory (1971-96)
Capital	Puerto Princesa
Common languages	Tondolese, English,
Government	Territorial constitutional monarchy
Monarch
• 1945-1965	Louis III
• 1965-1996	Elizabeth I
Lord Proprietor
• 1945-1987	Yijun Zhang
• 1987-1996	Jingyi Kwok
Legislature	House of Assembly
Historical era	Late modern
• Established	1946
• Anglo-American occupation of Imperial Tondo	June 2, 1905–June 4, 1906
• Independence of Tondo/Treaty of Manila	July 4, 1946
• End of Sierran sovereignty	February 2, 1996
• Disestablished	1996
Currency	Sierran dollar ($)
Preceded by Succeeded by Sierran Tondo Tondo Camp Maiden
Today part of	Tondo

Palawan and Cuyo, (Tondolese: 巴拉望省, Lalawigan ng Palawan) officially known as the Crown Dependency of Palawan and Cuyo from 1946–1971, and then the Commonwealth of Palawan and Cuyo from 1971-1996, was a Sierran territory. It was established in 1946 by the Treaty of Manila which officially ended Sierran colonial rule over Tondo (although de facto rule had ended by the late thirties) and granted most of the Tondolese archipelago independence as the present-day Republic of Tondo. Under the agreement, the Tondolese province of Palawan and the Cuyo islands was leased by the Tondolese government to Sierra after fifty years, and once the agreement reached its expiration, Sierra returned the entirety of the leased lands (with the exception of a small port in southern Palawan Island today known as Camp Maiden) to the Tondolese government in 1996. It was initially established as a Crown dependency in 1946 and then an unincorporated, organized territory under the title, "Commonwealth" in 1971.

Under Sierran rule, Palawan and Cuyo experienced rapid economic development and infrastructural improvements and was an important territory for Sierra economically and militarily. The territory was home to two large naval installations (Camp Maiden and the Serra Naval Base), and a thriving tourism sector. The territory also had a large community of Sierrans, mostly the families of military personnel stationed at the two Sierran bases, or business professionals. The community was unofficially segregated from the rest of the Tondolese native population, with non-Tondolese Sierrans residing and working within the base areas which had a 10-mile radius de facto "exclusion zone". This became a major source of controversy among the Tondolese public and when Palawan and Cuyo were retroceded back to Tondolese in 1996, tensions between the non-Tondolese Sierrans who chose to remain in the former exclusion zones and the incoming Tondolese community led to clashes and fuel for anti-American sentiment in the early 2000s. Post-colonial Palawan and Cuyo have since become one of Tondo's more developed and ethnically diverse regions.

Names

Palawan and Cuyo was officially known as the "Commonwealth of Palawan and Cuyo" after the 1971 Constitution specified the revised name. Previous iterations included the "Crown Dependency of Palawan and Cuyo" and the "Territory of Palawan and Cuyo". The official Tondolese name was 巴拉望省 (Lalawigan ng Palawan). In the Sierran mainland, it was commonly referred to as simply "Palawan" or the "P&C".

History

Main article: Sierran East Indies

Government

As an unincorporated territory of Sierra, Palawan and Cuyo derived its political legitimacy and rights from Parliament, not from the Constitution, and thus, only selected parts of the Constitution applied to the territory at the pleasure of Parliament. Although it was unincorporated, it was an organized government, and Palawan and Cuyo were granted through the Tondolese Autonomy Act of 1945 the right to form its own government, constitution, laws, and elected officials. Its head of state was to be the King or Queen (referred to as the "Lakan or Dayang" in Tondo and then Palawan and Cuyo), with a Lord or Lady Proprietor as the monarch's viceregal representative. The head of government was to be an elected official, and the Palawan and Cuyo government opted for a Westminster-styled parliament, enjoining the executive and legislature in Parliament, with the Prime Minister elected by their peers in the House of Commons, based on their command of confidence and affiliation with the ruling coalition of parties.