Insomnia

Netnet Camomot

ILANG tulog na lang, Election Day na!

The political colors in Cagayan de Oro are more vibrant now that the candidates’ tarpaulins and posters are decorating the city. Which color are you voting for–yellow, orange, violet, green? Some familiar faces there–a former Rotary club president, a former schoolmate, a former Jaycee chapter president. Hopefully they’ll morph into former political candidate and move on to city councilor!

A doctor-friend has the political ad of the former schoolmate in his clinic. That schoolmate happens to be a doctor, too, thus, there was the reminder from the doctor-friend to “vote for her.” I can’t remember if I replied because he then said, It’s better to vote for our friends.

And why vote for a friend? Because at least you know him already. No need to adjust to his, uh, ways if ever he wins.

Victory is, of course, your wish for a friend who has the potential to be an honest politician although those two words–honest, politician–do sound like an oxymoron.

Among the three mayoral candidates, I guess only the incumbent yellow mayor is my, hmmm, friend since he does remember my name. Yup, he does. He says, Net, each time we meet. Unless he’s referring to the net hanging on for dear life at the basketball court where he loves to play his favorite sport. Or to the net profit hovering above the city’s treasury office. Or he was saying, not, as in, Oh, no, not her again!

But he did give me binaki last year when our Rotary district’s Zone 1 Council of Presidents visited him at his city hall office. So, yes, I’m convinced we’re friends. Hehe.

I was looking for those little yellow Post-It notes at National Bookstore but they’ve run out of stock. Choosing yellow for your Post-It needs doesn’t necessarily translate to a vote for the yellow party. It’s simply the more practical way of making those little sticky notes visible to the Jurassic bespectacled eyes especially while trying to swim through the pile of clutter on top of the center table.

I showed that table to Kim Daguman and Ramil Caballero, and they were like, Your room is big, airy, nice! And there I was, trying to make them focus on the clutter: But…but…but…there’s the mess on that table!

And the mess on top of the cabinets, on top of closets, on top of the side table. These are the areas I can’t hide unless I’d ask a carpenter to build a second storey for these cabinets, closets and side table, yup, like a two-storey house if the bungalow is too small to contain all that clutter.

Now, if there’s one thing CDO’s political parties should avoid, it’s clutter. Their plataporma should be as clear as the glue at the back of the Post-It note. They can’t afford to have any kind of mess while they’re still trying to convince Cagayanons to vote for them.

Even the color should stay the same. No morphing from yellow to orange now. Or from yellow to violet to orange to green… That should have happened at the start, before they filed their certificates of candidacy.

Now that they have picked their colors, they can return to their former colors only after the election when they can blame their campaign color for their loss.

The only way the winning color can stop losers from complaining is to appoint them to any position inside the august halls of city hall. If they can’t be flower girl, flower vase will do, as long as all the other losers are appointed as flower vases, too. But if there’s one appointed as flower girl while the rest are morphing into a sea of flower vases, sure na ang blame game: dagdag-bawas, vote buying, guns, goons, gold.

But all three mayoralty candidates are already veterans in politics, they no longer have gatas sa labi when it comes to political intrigues, some of them–or is it one of them?–were even mentioned in the… uh… what case was Janet Napoles involved in? Hmmm, that seems so long ago.

Oh, the pork barrel scam! O my gas! How dare moi forget that!

Thus, if ever the losers would blame their party’s mayoralty candidate for the loss, there’s the veteran politician flicking an imaginary lint off his barong, jacket, or polo shirt while saying, Next!

The political candidate is a human being, he remembers those who are close to his heart. Therefore, if you’re not close to his heart, if you were merely asked to join his party to complete the list, be ready with hugot lines while pouring liters of alcohol on your own broken heart. Napakasakit, Kuya Eddie–which, by the way, is an expression that people described as “veteran” can relate with. And there’s the non-veteran wondering, Kuya who?

Meanwhile, all political candidates, both the veteran and the naive, er, new, are probably losing sleep as Election Day invades their nightmares. Oh, well. Good luck na lang.