Virtue and victory

Butch Bagabuyo

“I believe that virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.” – Beethoven

EXACTLY a month after transition Mayor Oscar S. Moreno took his oath of office, I went to the then ongoing exquisite-lookingenovation of the City Mayor’s Office. My sole purpose was to ask him to support my promise to prosecute former mayor Dongkoy Emano for plunder, malversation and graft and corrupt practices under RA 3019. But Mr. Moreno, without much ado, quickly turned me down for the expedient reason that criminal cases are “messy,” and the city has a lot of better things to do than prosecuting criminals.

Even as I was definitely stunned, the Ateneo spirit in me whispered loud and clear, “Don’t be pushed by your problems, be led by your dreams.”

Consequently, I recalled to mind quite vividly, “When British field marshal Bernard Montgomery defeated the German field marshal Erwin Rommel in the desert of North Africa in World War II, many thought that would be the end of the war. But Winston Churchill said, ‘This is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.’”

That was my first and last time to see hambuguero transition and now dismissed Mayor Moreno.

With the latest developments, legal maneuvers will feverishly follow. But I expect to hear an acting city mayor in our City of Golden Friendship any time soon. On second thought, considering the prevailing culture of impunity in the entire archipelago and the state of health of the uncontested “Alas” of Padayon Pilipino, the question of who will be running our city in the days to come hangs in the balance.

“Que sera, sera.”

But one thing is certain. With this latest development, other than the intruders (the aging basketbolistas, the capitol tourists, the elitist consultants and the three financial wizards kuno), the entire city government personnel are jumping out of a sinking, not just tilting ship. Shipwreck. And the exodus is not unlike the stampede that transpired right after the now ailing and former mayor Emano unconscionably dumped the corpses at the landfill during the killer-flood brought about by tropical Sendong on Dec. 16-17, 2011. Further, several criminal cases are awaiting final completion of the evidence gathering on the following, to mention but a few, namely:

• exclusion of voter-transferees from nearby towns to the City of Cagayan de Oro;
• unconscionable overpricing of materials and labor in the construction of school buildings and classrooms; and,
• the unmitigated graft and corruption at the Gaston Park, and the basura contract.

Believe you me, the soonest possible time, the head and its tentacles will fall hard.

It’s dismissal pa more.

• •

“Virtue like a rich stone, best plain set.”

At the start of his term as transition mayor, a good many Kagay-anon went out of their ways to give Mr. Moreno all the possible leeways.

I, for one, volunteered to share with the five minority councilors whatever little and  limited knowledge and experience in the art of how to win friends and influence others, including but not limited in the knowledge of the effective working partnership between the city executive and the legislative, but to no avail.

It did not take long when the minority councilors knew that they were not treated as partners in good governance. They told me that Moreno refused to listen to them. And whenever they make suggestions on any project, they are instantly shot down, and treated as garbage. It came to pass that they were forced to do on their own whatever their constituents asked of them. Consequently, the minority councilors became no better than outsiders.

Hambuguero and transition Mayor Moreno treated the minority councilors no better than the majority members of the city council. And because the majority councilors knew only too well how the minority councilors were treated by the transition city mayor, the former had field days in the legislative agenda especially on the power of the purse. Otherwise stated, the city government did not function as it should have. The transition mayor acted as though he was the city itself, and the city council was but an ornament. And because most, if not all of the majority councilors listened only to their acknowledge “Alas,” necessarily, the city and the people of Cagayan de Oro suffered. But not for long.

“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.” – Ecclesiastes IX II