Think, Pampanga

IT WAS the 1995 elections. Sitting Gov. Bren Z. Guiao’s clarion call for the electorate to make voting a full exercise of their faculty of reason screamed in streamers spread all over Pampanga.

Think twice, Pampanga. Don Pepito Mercado did not simply tread on the heels of his rival for the governorship but even doubled the impact of his call.

The subject of their desperate beseeching – action star Lito Lapid. Bewildered and bothered as they were of the outpouring, indeed, the tsunami of support the putative functional illiterate was generating from the Capampangan.

So, with nary a thought, the Bida ng Masa was voted governor with a margin of some 300,000 votes over Guiao; Mercado buried too deep in the avalanche to still matter in the final count.

Early into the night of the counting, hearing over radio Guiao already conceding defeat, Lapid exclaimed: “Gentleman neman pala y Tatang Bren, oyta mig-coincide ne.”

It was our – Lapid’s think tank – turn to think. Hard, really hard.

That Lapid went on to finish three full terms as governor and then bequeathed his post, like an heirloom, to his son Mark begged reason.

E mu tatasan ing camulalan ding Capampangan. Do not underestimate the gullibility of the Capampangan, is the kindest translation for what can pass as reason. That which I wrote ten years ago in the context of the Lapid phenomenon. That which earned me a bitter backlash from the “highly intelligent” Mequeni race. Consider though:   

With the lahar rampages in the wake of the Pinatubo eruptions, all Lapid practically did – ever with a camera crew in tow for the cinematic effect – was perform calculated stunts in the mud with all too willing “victims” to be plucked out of the mire.

Into his second term, Lapid earned the dubious distinction of being the first – and so far only – Pampanga governor ever suspended from office. Courtesy of the Ombudsman for the now infamous “quarry scam.”         

Even as his personal wealth – all too manifest in a fleet of luxury vehicles and number of mansions – obviously skyrocketed, the provincial coffers almost scraped bottom with the thinning out of the quarry income.

Still, Lapid won by landslides, and as I have said above made his son governor too, the boy’s only qualification for a public office being SK chairman in Porac, but only after the elected SK federation president abdicated, for unspecified reasons.

For the record, in all the 12 years of the Lapids at the Capitol, the quarry collection totaled P155,626,000.

When Among Eddie T. Panlilio took over, that Lapid collection found equivalence in but 155 days – all of three months and five days – with the Reverend Governor’s P1 million daily collection.

At the turn of Nanay Gov. Lilia G. Pineda, the daily income from quarry was even upped to P1.2 million.

Think, just think how much the province lost during the Lapid maladministration. Conversely, think how much some private wealth was amassed from that public loss.

Now, think twice how the corruption-maculated, “functional illiterate” Lapid even ascended to the august halls of the Senate.  And think more how and why, after what could only be deemed a lackluster performance as permanent chair of the Senate comite de silencio punctuated only by the PDAF scandal and his wife’s dollar-salting case in the US, Lapid remains among toppers in all current surveys. Notwithstanding too his absence of three years from the Senate and his ignominious defeat in the Angeles City mayoralty polls in 2016.  

Ing camulalan ding Capampangan, camulalan ding anggang Pilipinu mu naman.     

As with Lapid, so with fellow action star Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr.

At last Monday’s first hurrah of the Duterte regime’s Hugpong ng Pagbabago ticket at the Capitol, into the nadir of brainlessness the Capampangan descended. Yes, in the bitterest of ironies, it was right in the seat of political power, the locus of the best and the brightest, that Capampangan intelligence was grounded to zero.

Gone immediately viral that day was a Rappler video clip of two women, presumably Capampangan, “explaining” why they would still vote for Revilla despite his being accused of corruption in the magnitude of plunder and detained for a number of years.

“Kasi guwapo siya at mabait.” Can it ever get any less vacuous than that?

No, the women, presumably Capampangan, did not know any law Revilla authored or co-authored.

No, they said they did not believe Revilla could have dipped his fingers in the public coffers “kasi mayaman na siya.”

Ah, to what ludicrous depths has public discourse plunged.

Ang pinuno ng Probinsiyano blurbed Lapid’s posters with his rugged good looks – circa 1995 – impacting the popular TV series he starred in.

Ang Agimat ng Masa hollered Revilla’s posters with his handsome mug – dating to his gubernatorial run in Cavite – reminding one and all of his blockbusters.

What have those got to do with the Senate essential that is legislation? So, what do the voters care?    

Kasi guwapo. Kasi mabait. Kaya bida.

With showbiz as the IQ benchmark, the people can only have addled brains, incapable of thinking beyond what they see on-screen.

Again, my mantra comes to the fore: A people dumbed, a nation damned.