Past Pogs' profanities

 

Atin sobri! Ne?

Masuelu ya y Mayor Pogi meracal ta na. Casi deng aliwa ala na co mang puntalan. Hah? O’t munta co quetang cabila? Andian dirit e maniambut…

O deni, tacnaydayo cang Bugal cayu e, ne? Ne? Ne?

Tacnadayung animal e co man mepagal, atiu co queni.

O putanaydana nu ya ing CLAC president, CDC, lawen yu sinawa queng maglolo qng animal e ya man tinupad quetang usapan. Aniang magsalita ya balamu talagang malutu ya. Ne?

Ing importante pu ini, y Mayor Pogi tinggap na catamu andian pang nanu ya itang nakaraan yu iniang eleksyun tinggap na co pu.

Macarine na co man nung e ye pa ibotu. Putanaydayo, capal yu lupa canita.

Dati tatanggap co mung tsa-limandalan, tsa-libu. Ngeni addua ya libu. Ha, ha, ha.

Ing masaquit pa, putanaydanang Cong panagalan que, padagdag cu la. Tinacas ya ing animal uling balu na ala yang casambut. Tacnaydanang Cong, ne? Caibat na tang meca-adduang terminu, tecasan na cayu.

Dacal que pu queni…macananu mong panualan deng animal a deni?

Anang T-Mac, “Gawin ang tama.” Lawen mu ne man ing anacputang Doc, “Iwasto ang mali.”  Huuh, anacputa naman, nanu la reni?

…Balu co ring geua yung casalanan canacu. Lalu na ing putanaydana inyang tinagal cung vice mayor. Putanaydana, picture na mu, pagcait ye pa canacu.

…Y vice mayor atiu quen, saupan ye. Aguiang e yu ne pu saupan yan maniambut ya, bakit? O’ita pung metung a doctor a vice mayor apate ne, ala yang casambut y Doc Ric, apate ne…

COUNCILOR ARVIN “Pogs” Suller reduced his audience of honorable barangay leaders and fellow candidates to an assembly, aye, a menagerie, of beasts and bastards birthed by whores. Pampanga 1^st District Rep. Carmelo “Jon” Lazatin II, included.

In a clear departure from the respect befitting the departed, Suller’s sully did not even spare the dearly lamented Doc Ric Zalamea, the city’s vice mayoralty icon.

No grawlix – the graphical version of bleeping profanities – in our transcription of Suller’s five-minute-plus video now in web circulation, no translation too, if only to preserve their baseness, to infix their repugnancy.

Anyone adhering to even but the most basic decency, is slammed hard by the  offensiveness of Suller’s slew of expletives. Harder is its impact upon whom they were heaped.

Call for respect

Voltaire Zalamea, the late vice mayor’s son, posted in his FB page: Respect begets respect Atty. Arvin Pogs Suller .

My dad has been resting in peace, just like your dad. You want me to make fun of your late dad too? I can do that but I won't!!! I won't stoop to your level. That was not how we were raised by our parents. We were given good education from good Catholic schools and universities.

I will just share this so people would know where I'm coming from.

I am not a politician. I am not endorsing any local candidate. The Zalamea Family retired from politics after my dad's passing. Spare us. Never mention us.

Next time, think like an educated man before opening your mouth.

ANGELES CITY DESERVES SOMEONE BETTER.

Mamac talks back

Riposted Balibago barangay chair Tony Mamac in his FB page: Kung murahin mu ang mga kapitan at kagawad para silang mga walang kwentang tao, p’t…..na mu, mga respetado kaming mga tao at pare pareho lang tayong inihalal ng mga tao. Pero ikaw g..go ka, akala mu kung sino ka kung murahin mu mga kapitan at kagawad ani…ml ka. Nung nakaraang eleksyon tinulungan ka namin sa aming mga barangay kaya konsehal ka ngayon.

Hindi ka na nahiya sa mga kagawad namin dito sa Balibago na minura mu at sinabi mu pa na dati na kay Bugal (Alex C) kami at bakit ngayon na kay Mayor Pogi kami sabay mura ka. Pt…ina mu, kabata-bata mu at kaming mga kapitan halos senior citizen na kung murahin mu ganun-ganun na lang.

Kung ganyan pala ugali mu nagkamali kami ng pagtulong sa iyo. Maski maliit lang ang pagtingin mu sa amin, ta..rn…tdo ka at ani….ml ka tingnan natin sa susunod na elksyon ptng….ina mu, hindi boto makukuha mu sa mga kabarangay namin, katakot takot na mura ang ibibigay namin sa iyo. Bilangin mu ang mura na yan baka bilangin din yan sa Comelec.”

The T-Mac still had the decency to couch his cusswords, even as he apologizes to the reader: Pasensya na po kayo, hindi po ako palamura, pero nagdamdam lang po kami dito sa Balibago dahil sa asal nitong g…go na konsehal na ito.

Beyond the curses

There is more, a whole lot more, to Suller’s curses though than their tartness. An unraveling within Team Lazatin obtains in them.

Atin sobri! The call of enterprise politics, answered in Dati tatanggap co mung tsa-limandalan, tsa-libu. Ngeni addua ya libu. To the highest bidder, the votes go.

On the truism that it takes two to tango, Suller acted the prosecutor there serving an indictment on both the barangay leaders and Mayor Lazatin for committing a  patently illegal election practice.

Tacnaydanang Cong, ne? Caibat na tang meca-adduang terminu, tecasan na cayu. More than an obscene reference to the femininity of Congressman Jon Lazatin’s mother, Suller accused him of opportunism, of abandoning his supporters once he has used them.

So un-Lazatin, given how the family – from the patriarch Don Rafael, to the son Cong Tarzan, and now his namesakes, mayor and congressman – has always cared for their supporters, elections or no elections through three generations. 

Tacnaydana. Indeed, no Lazatin rivals could ever rival Suller, their supposed ally, in scheming their political annihilation. Unwittingly. Or maybe not.      

 

 

 

 

Damned in unlearning

 

 

 …THE REVOLUTION failed because it was badly directed, because its director gained  his place, not through meritorious, but through opprobrious acts; because, instead of supporting the men of most usefulness to the people, he, jealous of those men, rendered them useless.

Believing that the aggrandizement of the people was nothing more than his own personal aggrandizement, he did not rate the merits of men according to their capacity, character, and patriotism, but according to the degree of friendship or kinship that united them with him; and, wishing to have his favorites disposed to sacrifice themselves for him, he showed himself lenient even towards their faults. For his having thus contemned the people, the people abandoned him; and because the people abandoned him, he had to fall, like an idol of  wax, melted in the heat of adversity.

May we not forget a lesson so terrible, learned at the cost of indescribable sufferings. 

AS RELEVANT today are the words of the Sublime Paralytic, Apolinario Mabini, on Señor Emilio Aguinaldo. And as appropriate to that Caviteño of those days as to this Davaoeño of today.

Indeed, the tragedy of Miyong, repeated in the farce that is Digong. To paraphrase Marx.

Of the Filipino then, failing to heed Santayana’s admonition: History unlearned, we are a people dumbed, we are a nation damned. 

 

 

 

 

The party's over

 

SUNDAY, PRESIDENT Duterte was ousted as chair of the ruling Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan by the faction led by Sen. Manny Paquiao, installing Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III as the president’s replacement.

It was Pacquiao’s tit for the tat that the opposing clique inflicted upon him last July when he was ousted as party president and replaced by Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi.

Pacquiao remains president of PDP-Laban, his slice of it, at least.

“There is a group that wants to take over our party because they have plans in politics that are either secret or they can’t explain. They are new to our party.” So was Pimentel quoted as saying as the party’s casus belli.    

Dismissing the fission in the PDP-Laban, thus: “It is not our party that is make-or-break in the elections next year. It’s our country that’s make-or-break. The future of our nation is at stake. That is how important the next election is.”

As easily dismissed by one Melvin Matibag, secretary-general of the Cusi faction, as “a comedy.”

Matibag demolishing the son and very namesake of the PDP-Laban founder: “Sen. Koko Pimentel has no position in the PDP-Laban. He is irrelevant and he does not represent the party. His group [members] are pretenders and attention seekers.”

No, this is no mere party intramural. This is internecine strife. The PDP-Laban has just gone the way of all flesh in Philippine party politics. Not so much for lack of platform as for a surfeit of conflicted personalities with divergent interests.

Yay, party politics – that which warrants not only continuity but sustainability in the parliamentary system: think Israel’s Likud and Labor, Great Britain’s Tories and Labour too, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, and Germany’s Christian Democrat Union, to name the most prominent – is a stillborn in the Philippine political praxis. 

Something in the Filipino psyche had to be lobotomized for party politics to even have the chance of conception, more so erection, hereabouts.

The master of Philippine politics himself, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, knew this by heart. Thus his immortal take on Philippine politics as “personalist, populist and individualist” upon which he founded his fuehrership, and, with his beloved Imeldific, propagated their Malakas at Maganda apotheosis.

All Filipino politicians come from the Marcosian mold of “personal, popular, individual.” All pretensions to party advocacy are, well, pretensions.

So Manuel Luis Quezon patriotically ranted: “My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.” God bless MLQ.

Party loyalty is a contradiction in terms; loyalty to the country is as true as Judas’ devotion to Christ. Where politicos are concerned.

The pre-eminence of the individual politician over his party is inherent in Philippine political history. Thus, Nacionalista Party-Roy Wing, Liberal Party-Kalaw Wing, Liberal Party-Salonga Wing in the not too distant past.

Thus, a Liberal Party sundered by anti-GMA and pro-GMA flanks winging to Atienza-Defensor on the right, Drilon-Pangilinan, et al on the left. Poor Jovy Salonga, tottering at the fulcrum in an even more recent past.

On another plane, witness how political parties hereabouts are hitched on the ebb and flow of the tides of fortune of their founders.

The Kilusang Bagong Lipunan was an invincible monolith during the Marcos dictatorship, only to crumble to dust after EDSA Uno.

The sainted Cory Aquino took Ramon Mitra’s Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino to the promised land, then pulled the rug from under and emerged with Fidel V. Ramos’ LakTao, that’s Lakas-Tao for you, that evolved into Lakas-NUCD-UMDP.

Joseph Estrada’s Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino took the nation by storm in 1998, lost its sheen in the wake of his impeachment and subsequent resignation, only to return, not so much with a vengeance but with a squeak, in the Manila mayoralty in 2013, only to be totally drubbed by the upstart Isko Moreno in 2019.

The People’s Reform Party of Miriam Defensor Santiago proving its mettle in the battle for the presidency in 1992 giving the scare to El Tabako, virtually reduced to irrelevance in succeeding elections. It’s last whimper in 2016, with the demise of Maid Miriam.

Anyone still remember Renato de Villa’s Partido para sa Demokratikong Reporma and Lito Osmena’s Probinsya Muna Development Initiative that aspired for the presidency in 1998?

Two presidential runs of Raul Roco under Aksyon Demokratiko both ended way too short. His party in dormancy until Vico Sotto raised its standard and all that it stands for in Pasig in 2019. Wonder if new inductee to the party, the popular Isko, could soar where Roco faltered and fell. Some promise obtaining there. 

Still, and all – populist, personalist, individualist, as it is and has always been, the Philippine political experience makes a mockery of party politics. So, I postulated in a column in a long defunct local paper nearly a score of summers ago.

So, comes its validation anew with the case of PDP-Laban. Wow, I thought I just heard Nat King Cole crooning – 

The party's over
It's time to call it a day
They've burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It's time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up the piper must be paid…

 

 

 

 

 

Horse trading

 

"YES, NAG-UPO kami — kasama ko rin si Senate President — with Vice President Leni. At the time, kasama niya si [former] Sen. Bam Aquino.”

So, 2022 presidential pretender Sen. Ping Lacson confirmed a meeting with Vice President Leni Robredo, herself a presumed presidential timber.

“Di ko lang ma-divulge yung pinag-usapan dahil wala naman akong authority sa kanya para i-share yung aming pinagusapan. Pero nag-usap na kami,” Lacson added.

Similarly, another president-wannabe Sen. Dick Gordon: “I don’t know if I’m allowed by the Vice President, we had a chat last week. But I don’t want to say anything about what we talked about.”

Asked if they spoke about a possible “partnership” in the 2022 elections, Gordon said: “Yes, for transparency’s sake because lalabas at lalabas ‘yan. Pero hindi namin pinag-usapan kung sino ang kandidato.”

Another presidentiable, Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, is reported to have met also with Robredo. This, on top of their various “meet-ups” in their joint vaccination programs for the marginalized sectors in Manila.  

Lacson. Gordon. Moreno. All have had their date with Robredo. Come now the lamentations from a spurned suitor –

“Simula January, ako/Magdalo, and later on through Tindig Pilipinas, ay nagre-request ng meeting kay VP Leni para masimulan na ang preparation. Subali’t  ayaw niya kaming i-meet dahil kasalanan daw sa Diyos nap ag-usapan ang 2022 elections habang may pandemya,” former Sen. Sonny Trillanes rued on Facebook.

The Veep’s spox, Barry Rodriguez riposted: “I’d imagine there should be an easier way to ask for a conversation than throwing a tantrum on social media, right?”

Trillanes, reports said, has not been kept out of the loop of the VP’s intent to build the “broadest unity” possible in 2022.

“Discerning” is how Robredo’s approach to her presidential bid is described. 

“The more pragmatic Vice President argues that she needs a fighting chance to push through with her presidential bid – otherwise, someone else might be a better option than her in 2022,” so it was reported. Hence, the imperative to touch base with others who are not necessarily allied with the opposition. Horse trading, it’s called, as old as, if not even older than electoral politics itself.

What is generally accepted as “par for the course” in the run-up to the elections, Trillanes considered “crossing the red line.” Convinced as he is that only Robredo has the right to the banner of the opposition.

Thus, Trillanes: “We don’t buy this pretext that she can’t win therefore we need to compromise our principles by aligning with these Duterte enablers. I don’t buy that crap.”

Principles. The senator there instantly dredging memories of columns past, this one from the long defunct Pampanga News (Jan. 19-25, 2006), excerpted:
Politics and the rule of law

PRINCIPLED politics is a contradiction in terms: mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed, for in politics “no one acts on principles or reasons from them.”
There is that generalization arising from the fixity of our intellectual habits that deems the recurring characteristic trait of a segment of one species as representative of that species, if not of the whole genus. Thus, taken on the whole, politicians are “…the vilest and the narrowest of sycophants and courtiers that humanity has ever known; their sole end basely to flatter and develop all popular prejudices, which, for the rest, they but vaguely share, never having consecrated one minute of their lives to reflection and observation.”
And, Monsieur Leroy Beaullieu did not even live long enough to read of the Filipino politician, writing as he was of the French kind in the 1890s. So what’s the difference between a Filipino politician and dalag? One is a voracious filth-feeding bottom dweller. The other is a fish.
Expediency and convention, utility and interests – self-serving, vested interests, are the fundamental matters – I could not dare write principles here and desecrate the word – whence politics breeds…
Aye, where principles end, politics begins. And thrives. 
I can only weep with Trillanes.

 

Misreading surveys

DUTERTE-DUTERTE. Sara without the H and Digong the Punisher, in that order,  respectively leading all prospective comers to the presidency and the vice presidency in 2022.

So pollster Pulse Asia dished out its latest concoction. So, what else is new?

Unable to bite more than I can possibly chew, more so digest, I leave what Pulse Asia cooked to the delectation of the DDS and the excretion by the opposition.

By happenstance, there is one poll contemporaneous with Pulse Asia’s that is more to my taste, undemanding as it is of the learned exegesis mandated in a study of the Duterte-Duterte phenomenon, and where but a rudimentary knowledge of elementary analysis is sufficient.  

On Wednesday, popped this item in the web and in the page of at least one mainstream publication: Pampanga Gov. Dennis Pineda is among the top five performing provincial chief executives in the Philippines, according to a recent independent non-commissioned survey of the RP-Mission and Development Foundation Inc. .
A tsunami of congratulatory messages to and professions of pride in the governor swept the social media pages of Kapampangans for this no-mean-feat of their beloved Delta. 

Amid all the accolades, the governor shared: Base po sa independent non-commissioned survey ng RP- Mission and Development Foundation Inc. sa 5,000 respondents mula June 10-25, 2021, napabilang po ang inyong lingkod sa limang governors na may mataas na job performance rating… 

Pangako ko po, paghuhusayin ko pa po ang pagganap ko sa aking mga tungkulin bilang governor ninyo.

Where Pineda was matter-of-factly succinct, his supporters went the full nine yards of adulation that twisted and turned the survey result into what it is not.

Number 1 in Central Luzon. Number 5 in the whole Philippines. So screamed the comments, not the least of which coming from the Pampanga Provincial Information Office.

 

 Totally wrong in the first. Partially right in the second.

The objective of the survey was well defined: “Job Approval Rating of Governor/Per Regional Center.”

Dr. Paul Martinez of RPMDC Inc. himself made it clear: “As for the governors, we chose the regional center of the provinces to gather significant data for analysis. We are hoping that this will give our public servants a good insight on how they are doing with their constituents."

Therefore, the survey universe comprised only the 16 governors of the provinces designated as regional centers. The survey did not cover all the governors of the Philippines.  

Noted Martinez: “Of the 16 provincial governors representing in every region, 10 achieved a majority high job performance rating while six were not able to attain a majority approval.”

 Only Pineda

In Region 3, only Pineda of Pampanga was “surveyed” and not one of the six other  governors. To say then that Pineda is Number 1 in Central Luzon is not only misleading. It is totally false. Not to say most unfair to Noveras of Aurora, Fernando of Bulacan, Garcia of Bataan, Umali of Nueva Ecija, Yap of Tarlac, and Ebdane of Zambales.       

That Pineda is Number 5 in the Philippines is true, but only with the qualification: Of the 16 governors in the country’s regional centers. Not of the 81 governors of the Philippines, much as we would wish.   

All these, even granting absolute accuracy to the survey results and the highest integrity to RPMDC Inc.

An innocent misappreciation, if not a malicious misinterpretation, of the survey results obtained here among commenters and uploaders. Arising from either gross ignorance or abject sycophancy.

There is a fair, if easy, appreciation of Delta’s numbers in the survey at hand. Not of themselves but in a much broader political context. This is how I apply elementary analysis.

The question of approval by the constituents of their elective officials is best answered in elections. The votes gathered in the most recent election make the ideal benchmark of the approval rating of the official, against which surveys during his/her incumbency ought to be measured.

In the RPMDC Inc. survey, Pineda generated an approval rating of 62 percent. All on his own, absent any competitor. And all rejoiced.   

Now, let’s bring in the results of the 2019 Pampanga gubernatorial contest: Pineda – 657,606. Jomar Hizon – 229,392. James Escoto – 5,783. Amado Santos – 4,957.

Against three rivals, Pineda polled 73.25 percent. His closest pursuer, Hizon, getting 25.5 percent.

Basic extrapolation: Between May 2019 (election) and July 2021 (survey), Pineda’s “approval rating” went down by 11.25 percent. Sans any alternative choice. A translation of that percentage “loss” to actual number of voters will comprise the electors of a rather large Pampanga town. 

This is no cause for celebration. This is a matter of serious concern. That is, were I Pineda’s political officer.

It’s no rocket science, my observation can easily be dismissed off. Even scoffed at as a thing of apples and oranges, or in the native context, of dalayap and aratiles.

But isn’t that the very nature of surveys?

The sweetness or the bitterness coming always as an aftertaste.    

 

 

 

 

Mabalacat: Drug City Africanized

 

JUST LAST March 25, appeared here a compilation of drug busts within the first quarter of 2021 in the city which LGU shares a common acronym with its hizzoner, MCG: Mabalacat City Government and Mayor Crisostomo Garbo.

(Google https://punto.com.ph/mabalacat-drug-city/ if interested.) Anyways, that piece is summarized thus:

Mabalacat City yielding a haul of over P10 million in drugs in less than three months – and that’s only what has been reported in mainstream media. Just the major hits that passed the muster of public interest. How much more so with the misses – like the proverbial big fishes that always manage to get away?

No garbled thoughts now, but it does not have to take ace police reporter Jess Malabanan – anyone who has covered the police beat for long will do — to get this sense that Mabalacat City has reclaimed its title of being the “Drug Capital of Pampanga,” maybe even Central Luzon, that it so infamously held in the 1990s and 2000s.

Yeah, those years when Roxas District in Dau was no man’s land that law enforcers feared to tread.

Yeah, those years when Jopilan Street in Agusu was “scoring avenue” of shabu. The street name taking after the transactional “Jo, pilan?” query for the number of sachets a druggie wished to buy there.

Yay, I thought I just heard someone say: Mabalacat is not only a drug destination. Drugs are the city’s very destiny.

Just as then, so it is now. With an even horrific, if alien, twist. 

2 Nigerians, 4 Filipinos nabbed in Mabalacat City drug ops

So screamed headlines on June 18. 

“Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency arrested two Nigerians, and four Filipino cohorts, inside a drug den in Barangay Dau…

PDEA-3 director Christian Frivaldo identified the Nigerian nationals as Kingsly Anaelechi 37, of Rosanda St. Samson Ville, Barangay Dau; and Okafor Nelson Jr., 25, of San Rafael, Tarlac City.

The Filipino suspects were identified as April Wright, Eric Desuyo, Norwin Carpio, and Ralph Joseph Yalung, all residents of Mabalacat City.

Confiscated from the suspects were 30 grams of suspected shabu with an estimated value of P204,000; 30 grams of dried marijuana leaves with an estimated value of P3,600; two grams of high-grade marijuana (kush) with an estimated value of P2,000 and assorted drug paraphernalia…”

3 African nationals arrested for drugs, guns in Mabalacat City  

So came an echoing headline on June 29 – 11 days after:  

Operatives of CIDG-Pampanga and the Angeles and Mabalacat police stations arrested three African nationals in an operation at Bagong Lipunan Street, Homesite, Barangay Duquit. 

The subject of the operation, African Enzo Omgba, managed to escape on board a Hyundai Tucson.  

Police arrested his compatriots found at his house. They were identified as Flabien Jerome Noah Omgba, Yves Emmanuel Bidias Wanko, and Prosper Henri Junior Essomba Mbarga. 

Seized from the suspects were a .45 pistol, a .380 handgun, two magazines for .45 pistol, two magazines for .22 gun, assorted live ammo, five plastic sachets of shabu weighing 15 grams, two plastic sachets of dried marijuana weighing five grams, and two plastic sachets containing 45 pieces of suspected Ecstasy pills worth P250,000…

Where drug busts have virtually been at their scarcest in the rest of the province of Pampanga, Mabalacat City has not only stayed its course as drug capital: it has even added some foreign – African, that is – flavor to it of late. 

Who was it who posted in the web of Garbo’s City being a “transshipment point” of drugs? 

By Jove! Who was right. An international transshipment point, at that. Affirmed in the African connection and in the kush and Ecstasy pills, hardly domestic products.  

Prop up a wannabe, damn the media

SHARED IN my Facebook page was an open letter urging Angeles City councilor Amos Rivera to run for city mayor in 2022, posted over the weekend in the FB page of Joy L. Cruz, “former Heritage, Culture and Arts Officer of the Angeles City Tourism Office (2010-June 30, 2019), former Executive Director, Kuliat Foundation Inc. (2009-2016), among others.  

“You are the only candidate that truly embodies public service,” wrote Cruz of Rivera, the only one she sees as having the heart and the strength to change the system.

“You check all the boxes of my ideal leader for this city,” she said, citing what she considers as Rivera’s virtues making him the perfect mayoralty candidate. As much as a virtual candidate for sainthood, going by her drift.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Cruz’s enthusiastic endorsement of her candidate. She is well within her right in doing so. She should have just stayed at her encomia of her hero though.

But no, the goodness, aye, that “bestness,” of Rivera over and above all others needed to shine brighter. Hence, the utter damnation of the current city administration: “The people are not receiving their rights (sic) from the government, the truth is being suppressed, many from the media are paid to hide the truth…”

Of the government, I take no issue. It can defend itself.

But there was a scathing general indictment of the local media. And I said so in my comment to her post, asking her to “name names, damn the damnable, spare the innocent, provide proofs of her accusation.”

Her reply: she took down the post.

Having circulated in the web, only God knows – okay Google and FB too – how many had read that post before its takedown. The harm has clearly been done. It cannot be undone by simply expunging it from the page.  

So, I shall continue to hound Cruz with the challenge to identify “the many from the media paid to hide the truth,” whoever paid them, and to reveal whatever that truth they hid.

Else, she would be nothing to me but a sycophant lying to ingratiate herself to a prospective patron.   

Already, city hall habitues have tossed my way morsels of information relating to cancelled food concessions, discovered overpriced purchases, and hostile employment severance, as the proverbial axes to grind against the current city administration.

No. I refuse to dignify these hearsays, absent any indubitable proof, read: documentary, as in subpoena duces tecum of legalese. Otherwise, I would be just going down the level of Cruz making reckless shotgun accusations.

Of course, Cruz can just disregard my challenge to her as easily as she took down her post and think nothing of it.

Be forewarned then, Amos Rivera and all other candidates Cruz would publicly support this coming 2022 elections : I shall tag you all as “ENDORSED BY A LYING SYCOPHANT.”