Advance mag-isip

ADVANCE ako mag-isip. I now tend to email columns way ahead of the deadline. By the time you’re reading this, piggies will be quivering in fear, nervously waiting for their doomsday as Cagayan de Oro prepares for its fiesta.

A fiesta and any other grand celebration in Pinas are incomplete without the lechon. Pair that with the dinuguan or paklay that the lechon supplier provides as a perk, and the feast is complete. After paying for the family’s dinner at a resto, I did start thinking we could have spent the same amount by ordering lechon and eating at home.

But the high-carb dieter will surely ask, Where’s the spaghetti? The macaroni salad? The fruit salad? Hmmm. People notice what you don’t have and they may even criticize you for that.

Politicians eat criticism of them for breakfast. But that doesn’t stop them from running again and again.

There’s even chika that a Misamis Oriental politician is going to run for mayor here in Cagayan de Oro in 2025. But at a CDO event where he was invited, he merely sent a representative to speak on his behalf. I was actually looking forward to his speech because he’s a great public speaker.

He should now make his presence felt in CDO if he’s planning to run here.

If there’s one lesson a former CDO mayor has learned, it’s this: Be visible at the place where you intend to run next. But he had an excuse: the daily Covid-19 updates that were aired live on cable TV, and the many pandemic concerns kept him busy here in the city.

With the Misamis Oriental politician’s possible TOA—transfer of affection—to CDO, his current entourage has started giving hints of their plans to run here, too. They barely have two years to prepare so, yes, it’s wise to make the introductions while it’s still, hmmm, early.

A former CDO city mayor is supposedly planning to make a comeback in 2025. If a CDO incumbent politician will decide to join the fray, too, then it will be 2016 all over again, with the same surnames running for mayor here.

Politicians are not born overnight, unless their surnames are already popular in the political arena where positions can be handed down from generation to generation.

If the two older generations of the three surnames will feel too old to run in 2025, they can always convince their younger sister or daughter—who are incumbent politicians in CDO—to run instead, making the race even more interesting: same surnames as 2016, but different first names.

2025 will be a new ball game for Pinas since the Marcoses are back in Malcanang. Who will they support in the local arena? Hmmm. Abangan.

But first, there’s the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections in October 2023. That’s two months from now. Ilang tulog na lang. At least one potential barangay candidate has already expressed her “Happy Fiesta” greetings through a tarpaulin. Let’s see if she will host a fiesta celebration for the whole barangay, complete with lechon, dinuguan, and paklay.