Sun.Star Pampanga

Yeng Guiao finds a patron

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Former congressma­n Yeng Guiao’s political fortune has been slipping away after his disastrous defeat by now Rep. Jon Lazatin, son of the Lion King.

Yeng was reported to join the next contest for the 1st District, not under the blessing of Pampanga’s First Family. He has discovered a billionair­e patron called MVP. The man is known as a master dealer, Guiao’s trump card.

Words spread around that with his patron’s war chest, other rivals will lag behind in a race where an extra fuel in the tank decides the outcome.

The vaunted billionair­e’s largesse is a canard and is part of a propaganda which nobody denies, says a rival camp.”He is a businessma­n, not a gambler.”

MVP, in picking up Guiao’s dwindling sports-political career has made him head coach of NLEX basketball team, hoping this would raise the Coach’s PBA winning record as well as to regain his political stock in the 1st District.

Nothing has happened to achieve the twin goals. The NLEX had fallen to bad times and never reached the finals. But the Coach was born with a lucky st r eak.

Recently he was appointed coach to the national team in the ASEAN games thru the endorsemen­t of MVP. Here Guiao will have enormous TV exposure that will boost his popularity ratings among Pampango basketball addicts.

MVP’s greatness lies in building up people. He has put Guiao in the limelight. Yeng’s performanc­e in Indonesia is priceless PR investment including funding support from his new patron. One way to help Guiao retake the district certainly calls for a deal maker’s job.

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While MVP support to Guiao may disturb the rivals, all believe it will be boon to their respectve candidacy. Guiao will be using MVP resources to get votes in Mabalacat and Angeles. Yeng comes from Magalang where the Lion King has never lost a fight.

From early prognosis, Angeles City will not go for Guiao. Two native sons, by history and legacy, share a Torren’s Title for its political possession. Edgardo Pamintuan, then the political maverick of the era, broke tradition by his conquest of power giants Rafael Lazatin and Francisco Nepomuceno.

How Pamintuan broke the Dons’backs is a retelling of legend.

There are a few ways for Yeng Guiao to be elected congressma­n again.

No.1. Become a permanent resident of Angeles City. No.2. Win at least the remaining Conference­s of the PBA.

No 3. Get the blessing of Speaker GMA.

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The State of the City address of CSF Mayor Edwin Santiago is the longest and most comprehens­ive among all Region 3 cities. The success of most of his PR efforts are due to the combined initiative­s of Ching Pangilinan (print) and Boy Santiago (broadcast) as guided by the low profile thinkers-strategist­s in his office...Jay Pelayo, the hottest city councilor prospect of Angeles resembles the Duke of Cambridge in many profiles. Both made it to the top.

IT’S a minor rite of passage, nowhere near as important as bearing children or burying a loved one, yet there’s something about a class reunion that forces us to stop and think.

I’m writing this on the eve of our college reunion, some 25 years and four months since we graduated from the University of the Philippine­s Cebu College. I’ve been looking forward to the event for weeks, but was brought up short when I realized that part of me also dreaded it. I can’t quite explain why.

All told, our class must have spent more than a thousand days in UP’s campus in Lahug. But memory will let me retrieve fewer than a month’s worth in reliable detail. Among the ones I remember are the day I got grounded for the first (and only) time for violating my parents’curfew on the night of my first UP Cookout. The day the professor with the most exacting standards called me out for daydreamin­g in SocSci 1 (“Miss Amante, are you with us? Is this statement tenable?” I had to ask her what tenable meant.) The day I received a fantastic mix-tape from the boy I’d had my eye on for months, after he copied my homework for the best part of a summer; and the day, not long after that, when I found out he’d asked one of my closest

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