Butch Bagabuyo “Many persons might have attained wisdom had they not assumed they already had possessed it. – Seneca “Wit is the salt of Conversation, not the food.” “ALDUB Nation,” the latest world sensation is, to my uncomplicated mind, the perfect combination of the words: wit and wisdom. As we all know, wit is the astuteness, cleverness, and the ability to think quickly and clearly while, wisdom, a noun, is the state of being wise. As the teeming poor millions of Pinoy fans, who daily and religiously follow the noontime GMA teleserye “Juan for all and all for Juan,” the unwashed and the masa coined the fans’ love team as the “Aldub nation”––the perfect fusion of two young lovers:  young, handsome (tisoy) and humble Alden Richards and the equally young and beautiful Filipina (dark complexioned) with a demure smile and kissable lips, Maine Mendoza.  Their team-up is now a world phenomenon. You cannot have one without the other. Gets mo? Now, I dare say that had our transition Mayor Oscar S. Moreno, from the Municipality of Balingasag, remained humble (after all he came from humble beginnings) to this day, he would have been the man to beat. But because Oca sailed farther than he could row back, the sharks are now feasting on him even as his well-fed if not, exorbitantly-paid-out-of-government-coffers followers abandoned ship at will, and are now more concerned with their own survival. Believe you me, the main reason why the men, women and the LGBTs are outacing each other in jumping out of the fastest sinking, rat-infested group of dismissed transition Mayor Moreno is because Kagay-anons find the man a hambuguero, far worse than his predecessor, and we, Kagay-anons, love all the more a poor man who remains true to his humble beginnings. Frankly, had Oca been a genuine (not plastic) member of the Plazans or one of us, he would have known and avoided the one word we hate the most: hambuguero. Recently, I heard a loud whisper, saying that Oca is the perfect icon of the Platters’ greatest hit “The Great Pretender.” Knowing that he was once the protégé of the now sickly former Mayor Dongkoy Emano, we cannot help but say, no wonder. Dili gyud pwede ang langaw mahimong kabaw tungod kay sama sa usa ka langaw sa likod sa kabaw kanunay lang siyang magpabilin nga langaw. Undoubtedly, Kagay-anons are known all over the country, including the world, as a people proud of our leaders. And true enough, we never had any mayor dismissed by the Ombudsman from the service and perpetually disqualified from holding any government position. Of course, his legal panel and the very few remaining loyalists will readily say that they have filed a Motion for Reconsideration and if still unavailing they could go to the Court of Appeals and all the way up to the Supreme Court. But that is not the issue. As far as the Kagay-anon electorate are concerned, foremost on our minds, are the following:
  • Oca made it only as transition mayor because all the recognized leaders in our city willingly joined hands in creating a formidable knock-out victory for an underdog who was undoubtedly once a protégé of the now ailing former Emano. At that time, the irreverent dumping of the bodies brought about by tropical typhoon Sendong at the landfill was not only considered unchristian but it was politically unsound if not, suicidal, and an unforgivable arrogance.
  • Out of the five councilors elected in 2013 under the watch of the now dismissed transition Mayor Moreno, only one (?) has remained with him. But what is worst is that the only one now running with Oca is the very same councilor who mercilessly lambasted the dismissed transition Mayor Oca from the very start of their administration in July 2013 until he was caught attempting to transport a truck-load of hardwood lumber with questionable documents from Misamis Oriental to our city during the feast of St. Augustine. But ironically for their lackluster team, their hambuguero transition mayor has boasted of fighting all forms of illegal loggings and mining. So, what now?
  • Out of the 11 losers in that same local elections of 2013, only two are still in the line-up for councilors while the losing vice mayoral candidate opted to run as congressman for the 2nd congressional district of our city.
  • This is the first time in the proud history of our city that a city administrator was kicked out of his office the morning after attending the birthday party of congressman and now leading mayoral candidate Rufus Rodriguez.
  • Ever since the creation of our city in June of 1950, all incumbent city mayors found it daunting in trimming down from at least 160 aspirants to only eight in the city council ticket but almost the opposite happened in forming the slate for the dismissed transition and humbuguero Mayor Moreno. In fact, many say, he had to use the purse in the last-minute choice of a running mate if only to give a semblance of having a political base. Pagkaluoy tawon.
If all the above stated facts are not ominous signs of an impending shameful defeat and bad leadership, then I do not know what is. Based on experience, we have good reason to believe that, this early, the fight for the city mayorship has been reduced to a one-on-one between robust Rufus versus ailing Dongkoy. Tsada, di ba?