Campaign notes

THE CAMPAIGN period for local bets officially starts March 29, but wannabes have been at the hustings as early as the filing of their certificates of candidacy in October last year, if not even earlier.

Proof positive of this is not only in the posters and tarpaulins hung or plastered on every available space; as well as the stenciled names on just about every wall. Wonder how the Commission on Elections will make good its threat of sanctions against candidates who fail to take these down immediately before March 29.

Pressing the flesh in house-to-house sorties, medical-dental outreach services dubbed “barangay day,” night miting in sitios happen 24/7.  

The marginalized sectors have become the object of affection – witness the preponderance of the perfumed set’s mingling with the soiled and sweated masses, vowing their affinity, if not kinship, to them. (Inday, ang alcohol! immediately thereafter)       

It comes too in the sudden outpouring of the generosity, ingrained or studied, of the candidates, which at times other than the election season was…well, seasonal like Christmas.

While no Yuletide ham has yet been reported to have come the way of the poor man’s rickety table, there is a marked surplus of hotdogs and tocino in even the remotest areas of the province.  

One wag says the gubernatorial contest is shaping up to a battle between Mekeni Food Products and Pampanga’s Best, whichever the final outcome surely raising the cholesterol levels of the electorate.

In Candaba though, it is dressed chicken not cured pork that is being doled out again to the voters.

I do not know if my mayor still gives out truckloads of panambac to his constituents as he did in the last elections, but I have heard reports of the pyramiding scheme, first put in operation over 20 years ago, in vogue anew.

It goes like a recruit is given P1,000 to enroll (to the campaign) two others at P500 each and they in turn do the recruiting…down the line.

Speaking of two decades past, there was that election where three of the candidates running for mayor in my town outdid one another in offering their products for free to the electorate. There were but a few takers – only those whose loved ones departed at the time of the campaign – of their caskets.

Vote-buying? In the urban centers you won’t see money – cash – actually changing hands anymore. It’s the electronic age and the purchasing of votes, like any other commodity, is usually through some pay-pal scheme, or ATM deposit.

It is a campaign constant for candidates to promise the voters – vow, is the current operative word – the moon and the stars, like P1 billion for a city college and another P1 billion for a city hospital. The promises almost always ending up… well, promises. Empty, as the mind that made the promise. That which the street filosofo irrationalizes thus: Mengacu ne, asa(h)an mu pang tuparan na ita?     

A rarity is the politico that makes good on his vow. Rarer, indeed the rarest, is one who already fulfills promises even before they are expressed. How?

On the comeback trail, former Mayor Catalina Bagasina of Sasmuan on Monday awarded 10 one-storey residential units to an equal number of families displaced by a reclamation project in the town.

“I heard the concerns of the residents whose houses were reclaimed so I decided to buy lots from SPIDC and have the houses built so I can provide decent housing to the people.” So was the one dubbed as the “Bea Alonzo of Pampanga” quoted as saying. SPIDC is the Sapang Pari Integrated Development Corp. that has a low-cost housing program in Sasmuan.

The former ALE Partylist representative now promises more housing units as the 10 families make but the first batch of beneficiaries.

Now, were other promising politicos as actualizing of their promises as Bagasina, yes, also dubbed “Cinderella of Pampanga”…

One thing so far missed at this stage of the campaign is name-calling.

The classic “Monkey-tong” and “5-6” of an ancient era, “Manintunan” and “A bad boy Santos” of olden times have not been supplanted by new and more colorful labeling.

In the current campaign, there is but one branding that has so far cropped up – the “Loan Ranger” – appended to Angeles City Vice Mayor Bryan Matthew Nepomuceno for his role in securing the controversial P1.2-billion loan for a new city hall, sports complex, among others, and reinforced with his “vows” to allot P1 billion for the city college and another P1 billion for the Ospital ning Angeles, if elected.   

Those which his rival Alexander S. Cauguiran scoffed at as more loans that will most certainly consign the city in an inescapable debt trap.

Yeah, with the Loan Ranger at city hall, “Tonto” becomes the Angeleno. Pure pun intended there.