The beatable is the man to beat

Herbie Gomez

I HAVE to give it to the Rotary Club Kalayaan CDO led by fellow columnist Netnet Camomot, Lihok 2016 and the local National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) headed by Nestor Banuag Jr., Gean Cesar of Parasat Cable TV, the local chapter of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (KBP) and the other organizers of Thursday’s “Final Debate.” These people really did a good job in bringing to one stage the city’s mayoral and vice mayoral candidates for a no-holds-barred public debate the likes of which has not been seen before in Cagayan de Oro. The Thursday debates that lasted for about four hours at the Atrium of Limketkai mall made the three presidential debates pale in comparison in terms of excitement, information, and entertainment.

From where I sat, Rep. Rufus Rodriguez of the city’s 2nd District and Carmen barangay councilor Joaquin Rainier Uy won the debates. But, of course, my assessment can always be challenged.

Uy came as the biggest surprise during the debate. I don’t recall ever meeting him, and not once did I hear him speak. I had thought that his only “qualification” or the only reason why he was picked as the running mate of reelectionist Mayor Oscar Moreno is his being a son of Rep. Rolando Uy of the city’s 1st District. On Thursday, unknown to him, he reminded me to never judge a book by its cover.

Thomas Paine put it this way: “The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.” Good old fashioned evidence-based reasoning was exactly what Uy used in finishing off Vice Mayor Caesar Ian Acenas. He crippled Acenas with a question on why he and other local officials during the Emano administration failed to give  “piso-piso” beneficiaries land ownership titles given that they were in full control for 15 years when the Moreno administration was able to give these to over 800 families in just about three years. And when Acenas skirted the question and then alleged that the titles distributed in the last three years were still in the name of city hall and not the recipients, Uy finished the vice mayor off with this wager: “I challenge you to withdraw from the race if I can show you a land title in the name of a beneficiary. And if you can prove me wrong, I will withdraw.” All that Acenas could do was grin and shut up. There was no single word of rebuttal. That was fatal, a checkmate. The vice mayoral candidate of the Centrist Democratic Party (CDP), Councilor Roger Abaday, could only agree with Uy. And Acenas’s rhetorics and above average showmanship all went down the drain in the last few minutes of the vice mayoral debate because of the damning bitch-slap by Uy.

In the mayoral debate, Uy’s candidate received quite a beating which is understandable because he is the incumbent. I have yet to see a local government that doesn’t get criticized for its shortcomings despite its best efforts to serve. Somehow, its efforts are always not enough. Since Moreno is the incumbent, naturally, he was not in the best position during that public debate. As expected, all the issues were about what he did and what he did not do.

Neither was ex-mayor Vicente Emano in a good position to carry out an offensive against Moreno or Rodriguez. He was mayor from 1998 to 2007, vice mayor from 2007 to 2010, and mayor again from 2010 to 2013. So, look who’s talking?

Emano’s declaration that the city was never bombed when he was mayor was clearly a falsehood. I’m surprised that neither Moreno nor Rodriguez responded by saying that Emano just lied through the skin of his teeth or that the ex-mayor was suffering from memory loss. How could all the three candidates miss the deadly bomb attack outside Maxandrea Hotel just before the elections? Photojournalist Joey Nacalaban counted at least five bombings that took place during the Emano administration.

Of the three candidates for mayor, Rodriguez was strategically positioned. He stood on a high ground, and was able to attack the two without fear of reprisal because he has no blemished mayoral record—there is no mayoral record to speak of because the congressman was never mayor and the closest position he had to being a local chief executive was when he served as Misamis Oriental’s vice governor by way of automatic succession in the ’80s. His political career, just like other Marcos boys at that time, was interrupted because of the 1986 Edsa Revolution. Rodriguez is lucky neither Moreno nor Emano has capitalized on his links to the now defunct Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (the Philippine version of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party) of the disgraced administration of the late strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos, a man many Cagayanons really hated.

To his credit, Rodriguez, an orator and debater in school, is a good communicator and really connects to people. He has affected people the way former congressman Erasmo Damasing Jr. did. He is the kind of politician who likes to please and make everyone happy, and the type who would rarely say “no” to requests even if these are undoable. He also has this “killer smile,” and most often, he emits a positive aura. He is a traditional politician in a positive way. Yet the many things he promises to do are sometimes too ambitious-sounding like solving the world’s problems are going to be a walk in the park for him, that he would get rid of all of Cagayan de Oro’s woes overnight and in a snap of his fingers, and that nothing can ever go wrong if ever he becomes mayor of the city. You see, when promises of remedies are made to sound like these are too good to be true, some people would really pause and think.

Rodriguez has succeeded in projecting himself as a good alternative to Moreno—the reelectionist mayor is suffering the consequences of his failure to disabuse the minds of those who regarded him in 2013 as some sort of a messiah with a quick fix to the 15-year mess of his predecessor.

After staging his political comeback some nine years ago, Rodriguez has become very popular but there is no way of telling if the degree of his popularity is enough to outmatch and stand out against the inherent advantages that a sitting mayor enjoys.

With Emano as the exception, no Cagayan de Oro mayor who sought reelection was ever voted out of office. Name one. Former mayor Pablo Magtajas never lost a reelection despite serious corruption issues that hounded his administration. He served three full office terms as elected city mayor. If Magtajas lost to the then councilor Constantino Jaraula in 1998, it was because he ran for congressman, and not for mayor (he was constitutionally barred from seeking reelection that year).

Emano also served three full office terms as mayor before becoming vice mayor and mayor again despite very serious corruption issues and other controversies that hounded his administration. When he was mayor, he was challenged by Magtajas, and then by the now Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III. They lost to the then reelectionist mayor because he enjoyed and was in control of all of city hall’s resources.

Point is, there must be something in one’s control of city hall that gives the sitting mayor an inherent edge or advantage, although not necessarily a cloak of immunity, over his challengers.

Is Moreno, the incumbent mayor, unbeatable? Not at all. But as the Cagayan de Oro voting patterns and historical data show us, only something extraordinary can cost a Cagayan de Oro mayor his reelection. In the case of Emano, that extraordinary thing was Typhoon Sendong. Without the 2011 tragedy, Emano would still be the mayor today. In the absence of a Sendong today, perhaps extraordinary popularity, extraordinary political machinery or extraordinary issues can do Moreno in. And maybe, the political climate in the city today is extraordinary. I really can’t tell. (Again, there is something about city hall that always makes anyone who controls it the man to beat).

Will Rodriguez or Emano set a new record by being the first to unseat a sitting Cagayan de Oro mayor without an extraordinary event such as Sendong? Perhaps. What I am saying is, that has never been done before in this city. But maybe, just maybe, Rodriguez and Emano are extraordinary politicians with extraordinary political organizations, extraordinary strategies, and extraordinary resources who are capitalizing on extraordinary issues and an extraordinary political climate against the reelectionist mayor. If they are extraordinary, then Moreno should start packing up. But that remains to be seen, really.

Unseating a reelectionist mayor under an ordinary situation has not been done before in this part of the country. And so, making Cagayanons vote a sitting mayor out of office is going to be an extraordinary feat. Good luck, gentlemen, on your attempt at setting a new Cagayan de Oro record by doing the extraordinary.

Moreno is beatable—but he is the man to beat.

Pastilan.