Entrepreneurial politics

RUNNING INDEPENDENT. That is what is generally reported of Hizon siblings wannabe governor Jomar, city vice mayor-wishing Angie, city council aspirant Ricky, and Bacolor mayoralty hopeful Derek.

On record, that – independent – could very well be what is entered in the party affiliation slot in their individual certificates of candidacy.     

But far from independent are the Hizons, as much politically as economically, if we go by their campaign posters. And farthest yet are they from being partyless.  

Witness the trademark of the family owned Pampanga’s Best in all their campaign collaterals, whether collectively or individually.   

In effect, Pampanga’s Best logo takes the spot in all the Hizon candidates’ posters where in their contenders’ and counterparts’ usually and prominently enshrined are the yellowed LP, the red-green-white Hugpong, the blue Lakas-CMD, the orange PMP, the green Kambilan, and the myriad colors of other political parties as well as partylist groups.

A political party there, unto itself, is Pampanga’s Best. Running on the platform of tocino and longganisa. And does the established political parties even better.

Hereabouts, political parties inhere in personalities. Thus, the KBL in Marcos, LDP in Mitra, Lakas-CMD in Ramos, PMP in Erap, PRP in Miriam, NPC in Danding. Of currency, Hugpong in Sara -- without the H.

None of those politicos though, great as they were, had their mugs impacted in the logo of the parties that owed their very existence to them. But not Pampanga’s Best, what with the founder’s beatific countenance making up practically a fourth of the label.      

Shorn of the least subtlety, in all its in-your-face directness, Pampanga’s Best in the Hizons’ posters thereby conveys a truth about the real point at issue – politics as mere adjunct to economics. Entrepreneurial politics is more, much more, than the commodification of the ballot. Pampanga’s Best just took it to another level – soft-sell its product, hard-sell its candidates. If its candidates lose, at least their company got advertising mileage.  

Comes here too yet another affirmation of the timeless universality of the Golden Rule – He, who has the gold, rules. In this case of Pampanga’s Best, it is a she – not the sister Angie though – that rules.

The face – the whole persona, indeed – of Pampanga’s Best, both literally and metaphorically, is the matriarch Doña Lolita Hizon.     

Seeing her very being in all her offsprings’ campaign materials makes an attestation to another truism: Mother knows best. In all of life’s vicissitudes, economic foremost, as in running a household so in funding an election campaign.

As it was the Doña – her old gentleman Apung Jun aside – that made the empire of tocino and longganisa, so shall the Doña be the builder of her progeny’s political domains.     

Pampanga’s Best is glorious manifestation of Doña Lolita at her best. So, shall the province – the capital city too – be at best with her children at the helm, naturally nourished as they were, and still are, with her “bestness.”

Where the Doña failed in giving Pampanga the best with the one she herself proclaimed “like her own son” – the reverend governor Among Ed Panlilio unheeding her counsel, virtually disowning her after assuming office – she may yet succeed with her real flesh-of-her-flesh Jomar. The dutiful son that he is, as impressed in the public eye, at least.

Ay, there’s the rub.

The Doña’s demanding full acknowledgment, if not exacting recompense, of her million-peso contribution to the Panlilio campaign chest after the governor spurned her does not exactly bode well in a Capitol with her son as chief executive. If ever.

Alas, while it is no foreboding, certainly forbidding is the strangest thought of a Jomar ruling – what with a Doña Lolita de facto reigning -- the province of Pampanga.    

Pampanga’s Best to make Pampanga best?

Not by longest mile, if we listen to the barriofolk of Arayat town, still smarting from braving the heat during a Jomar sortie only to be doled with a solo unbranded chicken breast, instead of even but a kilo of Pampanga’s Best tocino or longganisa,    

“Pampanga’s Best ang ipinapangalandakan, ulilang petso ng manok ang ipinamigay.” So went the collective lamentation of an audience feeling deceived.

Yeah, Board Member Atty. Jun Canlas may just need to amend the case of vote-buying he said he would file against Hizon. To incorporate trickery and deception, as in false advertising, maybe even estafa.       

But I am no lawyer, so what do I know about the law, eh Jomar?