In the end, there can be only one

By HERBIE GOMEZ
Editor in chief

FIGURES don’t lie, and data culled from the 2010 and 2013 elections indicate that next year’s political exercise would be a cliffhanger given a three-cornered fight for the mayoral post involving Mayor Oscar Moreno, Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, and ex-mayor Vicente Emano.

In this scenario, Emano, who commands an average of 95.6 thousand votes, has a chance of being elected as a “minority mayor” just like in 2010. That year, the then vice mayor Emano launched a campaign to take back the city’s leadership from his ally, then-mayor Constantino Jaraula who willingly gave up the post. Emano succeeded, and beat his challenger, 1st District Rep. Rolando Uy, by a hairline margin of 2,130 votes. Emano garnered 99,853 votes against Uy’s 97,723.

Here are the facts: Moreno garnered 109,886 votes and Emano received 92,033 votes when they fought for the mayoral post while Rodriguez was reelected as congressman with 87,071 votes in the 2nd District alone.

Data show Rodriguez lost 12,988 of his 2010 votes in 2013, and Emano lost 7,820 votes that same year. Uy is also a force to reckon with. When he ran for congressman again three years after Emano defeated him, Uy won with 48,026 votes in the 1st District alone, some 49.6 thousand votes less than what he garnered in the city’s two districts when he ran for mayor in 2010.

In a three-cornered fight for the mayorship, Uy could make or break the campaign of either of his two political allies. Collectively, the three––Uy, Moreno and Rodriguez––gave Emano a run for his money in the 2013 elections but not his party, the Padayon Pilipino, which retained its control over the city’s legislature despite a string of setbacks in the aftermath of the December 2011 “Sendong” devastation that redefined local politics.

Emano was voted out of city hall by 109,886 Cagayanons, and Moreno enjoyed a comfortable lead of 17,853 votes in the 2013 elections. But that was the year when Rodriguez and Uy were behind him. Rodriguez’s surprise announcement two Sundays ago that he would run for mayor next year was a game changer.

With a three-cornered fight for the mayoral post looming, the three seasoned politicians––Moreno, Rodriguez, and Emano––would all find themselves on unchartered territory in Cagayan de Oro politics.

There is no way to determine exactly how many of the ballots cast in favor of Moreno in the last elections, were his command votes. There are no election data that can be used to compare his 2013 feat with a previous election in the city.

But the sum of Rodriguez’s and Uy’s votes that year shows that 25,211 of those who cast their ballots in favor of the two congressmen did not vote for Moreno in 2013.

Data also show that Rodriguez performed poorly in the 2nd District in the last elections vis-à-vis his 2010 performance. Rodriguez’s votes in the 2nd District plunged from 100,059 in 2010 to 87,071 in 2013, a difference of 12,988 votes, after he and his family threw their support behind Moreno’s mayoral bid.

But with an average command votes of 93.5 thousand in the 2nd District alone based on his 2010 and 2013 records, Rodriguez is the man to watch although it remains uncertain exactly how Moreno would affect him, and how he would fare as a challenger of a mayor in an election that would require votes not from one but two districts. Rodriguez has never sought votes in the 1st District.

This early, as Rodriguez and Moreno figure in a tug-of-war to win over Uy to their side, and the same political workers and people who collectively supported them in 2013, the Padayon Pilipino is lurking in a corner, watching, working to keep its machinery and Emano’s average command votes of 95.6 thousand intact, and waiting to strike. In the end, there can be only one.