Battle of the loud speakers

Nora Soriño .

ILIGAN City — “There’s an intense battle of speakers raging in the city these days,” I said to Phil, a media practitioner as we hunched over some bread and coffee in some diner. “Even if it’s not campaign period yet,” I added.

“A battle of ‘speak louders,’” he said, correcting me incorrectly. But that meant he agreed with me that there is such a battle. We only disagreed on the name. His term was street lingo for “loud speaker,” a device used to magnify sound, like microphone, megaphone, speaker and allied devices. For somewhere, we could still hear the sound of the radio even if there wasn’t any radio nearby. This is compliments from the speakers placed in strategic position in a Madelicious Bake Shop  some few meters away from where we were having our coffee brake, I mean break.

The sounds that we heard came of course, from… who else but a  member of the speakers’ bureau of the “Sah.” It’s short for Frederick Siao, Marianito Alemania and  Samuel Huertas who are running for congressman, mayor and vice mayor, respectively, in the coming elections. Naturally, the speakers, who are either of the following names, Boy Decena, Jun Enriquez, Boy Altres or Bundio Aladia, are praising to high heavens the virtues of these three and the rest in their tickets even as they are demolishing the GaReVe team (Leony Roy Ga, Celso Regencia and Jemar Vera Cruz) who are their opponents in such positions in the coming May elections.

Not to be outdone though, the latter  has also a huge speaker placed in the Iligan Bus and Jeepney Terminal at Tambo, this city. And you can hear clearly the speaker, Jun Lino Bacus, praising the GaReVe team to high heavens and demolishing the “Sah.”

A battle indeed and not necessarily great.

There are several Madelicious bakeshops so there are speakers practically all over the city. For the Sah team, that is.

There is another terminal at the National Steel Corp. grounds, so you can hear, too, speakers for city hall. The speakers here aside from Bacus, are  Pops Libria, Jose “Joe” Pantoja who is the city info officer. Plus, there is Weller Digao whose sounds for Ga-Re-Ve from another station is doing a rekorida around the city.

Says a well, “Sah battler” (for want of a better word): “This is the first time that a voice in a radio station is on a rekorida circling the city streets. Nobody is listening anymore to them. That’s why they’re doing that. It’s laughable.”

I disagree to that one, for the GaReVe still have plenty of supporters and there are still many listeners as there are those who are sending text messages or calling said anchor for the one on board that station. They’re just being creative. A brilliant idea, this rekorida of a radio program, I suppose. This travels around the city via some vehicle to the annoyance or the delight of the listener, depending upon whose side he is inclined to.

Speaking of creativity in this battle though, I’d give a higher mark for the Madelicious team, which is another name for the Sah team, because aside from the praising of the team and the demolition of the opposing team, they have come up with a drama — a drama on the life of Marianito Dodong Alemania. It’s almost a rags-toiches story. I say “almost” because I can’t imagine Dodong wearing rags before he became the chief executive officer of the Madelicious Foods Corp..

Time was when the team of Regencia was top in creativity, what with their rallies like the “Jericho March” then. This was a dramatic rally against then vice mayor Ruderic Marzo who wanted to oust Regencia as mayor then per their perception 

But they can’t rally anymore, because they’re the incumbents, so whom should they rally against? Against themselves? Their rally then at one time, included some nuts at the city public plaza, adding color to that one. And this was relished by the people here which I think was translated into votes. So the ambitious 15-0 in the next elections for the Regencia team was realized. I mean, almost.

But this winner in this “battle” may not necessarily win the war. That is, winning in the elections. Although the belief is it might be any of the two “battlers.”

Esmail though, a friend who comes to the office from time to time has another idea. He says there’s a crew in a “submarine” which he says is still “underwater” but when election time comes both the two “battlers” will submerge underwater. And it is the “submarine” of lawyer Dino Quijano and Betsy Zalsos, a CPA-lawyer who will go up the surface. Meaning, the two will be losers. Quijano and Zalsos are also vying for positions of mayor an vice mayor with the rest of their team not yet known.

“That’s his opinion, iya pud na,” said Phil of Esmail.

I said, “No comment for now.”