Manny Valdehuesa
FIESTA time calls for jubilation, hospitality, goodwill. So, enjoy! But if you walk the plazas, markets, or malls these days, and listen to the talk and the exchanges, there’s little optimism, lots of sarcasm.
Listen, for example, to Dulce Ytem at Limketkai, or to the denizens of Centrio and Gaisano, or Pueblo and Xavier Estates. There’s frustration at the endless political maneuvering—mainly by the opposition who constitute majority of the city council.
The trapos can’t seem to stop trying to recoup lost confidence in their defeated leader. Shameless, narrow-minded trapos with narrow visions are single-mindedly gunning for the restoration to power of their defeated patriarch. And so gridlock grips City Hall. It has been so since Day One.
Long years of being in power and being dictated to by a Super Trapo blinded this bunch of trapos to reality. They cannot accept that their Super Trapo has been vanquished and is no longer in power.
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What’s going on should teach every Cagayano a lesson: that citizens must learn to assert their sovereign power and team up with others to keep irresponsible trapos from capturing political office. Otherwise, governance will always be a victim of poorly educated, uncouth characters who view politics as a Game of Thrones.
Our city badly needs mature leaders with sharper vision, better minds, broader education, and more sensitive hearts than the present crop of pretentious characters.
We need people with superior knowledge and analytical skills so that conditions and challenges in our community can be better analyzed, appreciated, and addressed. We need leaders with better character, deeper convictions, and commitment.
Note: what’s a reckless driving trapo doing in the City Council? He caused the death of a young man while on a dawn escapade and went unpunished! And why was his Godfather the mayor allowed to shield him and to fix the case without consequences? That episode alone should have led to their banishment to political limbo!
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Today, both Alden Bacal and Vicente Emano arrogantly appropriate broadcast space to indulge their penchant for gratuitous harangues that cause stress instead of comfort, that divide instead of unite—in the process, confuse people about who are the good guys and bad guys.
Then there’s the juvenile, pedantic vice mayor who, judging by his growing corpulence and pretentious posturing, clearly relishes his undeserved position.
Cagayanos need not accept the inevitability of having the same set of trapos in power. Decent Cagayanos must learn to be impatient, even indignant, at this bunch’s shenanigans—and stop them once and for all from sullying the dignity of public service and the integrity of our city.
(Author of books on governance, Manny Valdehuesa is national chairman and convenor of Gising Barangay Movement Inc.. Email: valdehuesa@gmail.com)
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