Did Osmeña get his wish yesterday?
Yesterday’s edition was actually a proxy war between Osmeña and the opposition and a dry-run of next year’s local elections
Pareha ra ang approach sa mga suspects. Mora sad og pareha ra ang suspects kay nagdala sila og long firearms. PB MEMBER SUN SHIMURA, ON HOW THE SUSPECTS IN THE AMBUSH OF HIS STEPFATHER VICENTE LOOT ACTED LIKE THE SUSPECTS IN THE AMBUSH OF BUSINESSMAN WELLINGTON LIM
The streets were virtually deserted yesterday. If only it were possible to hold elections every day. How smooth and pleasant it would be, traveling in the city.
One of the few vehicles I saw while waiting for my Grab ride to the radio station yesterday morning was a passenger jeepney sporting a big tarpaulin sign on its front bearing the pictures of a city official and the wife of another city official. When it stopped to pick up more passengers near where I was standing, the driver asked if I was going to Abellana. I politely said no.
I’m not sure if the ride was free but I’m pretty certain that the jeepney was ferrying voters to the Abellana National School or the adjacent City Central School. It’s an old practice on election day, one that is supposed to be prohibited by law. But like most other election rules, the no-ferrying of voters policy is honored more in the breach than in the observance. The jeepney that I saw wasn’t the only one fielded by candidates and their backers yesterday.
By the time you read this, most of the winners shall have been proclaimed in both the barangay and the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections. The Commission on Elections has predicted a heavy turnout because the voters are familiar with the candidates. I am one of the few holdouts but for precisely the same reason of familiarity with the candidates plus my experience with the uselessness of the barangay officials. Besides, there is no one else left to tend the house.
The election in Cebu City bears watching as it will determine the configuration of the city council. Two council seats are at stake, the one reserved for the Association of Barangay Councils president and that for the chairman of the SK Federation, both in the city.
That is why Mayor Tomas Osmeña has pulled out all the stops in the campaign as if it was he himself who was running. (Don’t kid yourselves, his filing of criminal and administrative cases against many barangay captains, most, if not all, of whom are identified with the opposition, has a political agenda).
The Barug-PDP Laban-Team Rama political consortium (for lack of a better term) had not been sleeping on post either. Former mayor Michael Rama had been meeting regularly with his camp’s candidates until election day. So had Vice Mayor Edgar Labella, who is most likely to be the opposition’s candidate for mayor in 2019.
Despite the law’s admonition that barangay and SK elections are and should be non-partisan, yesterday’s edition was actually a proxy war between Osmeña and the opposition and a dry-run of next year’s local elections. Whoever had the most number of village heads and SK chairmen elected yesterday would effectively control the city’s directions.
Of course, Osmeña will still be the mayor, as he has repeatedly asserted, regardless of the results of the May 14 elections. But, as he himself loudly complains, not as effective as he wanted to be for want of cooperative (subservient?) council. Let’s see if he got his wish yesterday.