Mongaya: Change in 2010?

WILL 2010 an election year offer something new for Cebu and the rest of the country? Or will we have more of the status quo?

Politicians will think of this as something in terms of winning the coming elections. The opposition promises change. Those in the administration will either try to reinvent themselves as change agents or promise more of their so-called achievements in the years to come.

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For voters, this means choosing leaders who promise change or who symbolize the status quo.

In my view, voters who accept money in return for their votes, be it from the opposition or administration, prefer the status quo. New politics upholds principles and support for candidates based on what they stand for and plan to do.

But then, this view might just be too idealistic yet. Even cause-oriented friends who uphold new politics have now gone practical.

For example, Satur Ocampo of Bayan Muna and Liza Maza of Gabriela running along with Bongbong Marcos as senatorial candidates of Sen. Manny Villar’s Nacionalista Party (NP). Sen. Loren Legarda, who once denounced Villar, now happily raises her hands as his running mate.

The national democratic Bayan Muna and Gabriela stalwarts find traditional politicians like Villar more acceptable than frontrunners Sen. Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas, who are allied with the social democrats.

In Cebu City, Akbayan’s Alvin Dizon has allied himself with Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK) and shares in the benefits of Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s P600-million political budget for 2010.

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Some grass roots political leaders of BOPK lamented that political money has not flowed except for the P2,000 for senior citizens during the Christmas season. They should be happy.

The Liberal Party (LP) in the province does not have the kind of political budget from Congress or Cebu City coffers.

But, at least, the LP has a province-wide organization unlike the Nacionalistas, which did not put up a provincial slate thinking, to their dismay, that One Cebu would support NP candidates.

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I don’t know how people stretched their bonuses and salaries for the long Christmas and New Year weekends. The family, for example, lived for a few days on paksiw to stretch the Christmas Eve lechon that I intend to pay on my next payday yet. After years of eating lechon in Talisay City, I certainly had established some credit perks.

For many ordinary folks, lechon nowadays has become unreachable.

Good for people in the lechon business though, that well-off families cannot do without the tasty roasted pig in celebrating Christmas and the New Year.

Police Colonel Ariel Palcuto, who owns Ayer’s Lechon, for instance, said the price has gone up to P4,000 and P5,000 per pig. But he still maintained the same volume of sales during the season compared to 2008. Good for you, sir.

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From my end, at least, stretching the budget meant spending more time at home and devoting some attention to finishing touches and the bibliography of my long overdue volume on the history of Naga City. The draft reached over 120,000 but my editor Joy Gerra of USC Socio-Anthropology Dept. and Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (Rafi) cut it down to over 90,000. This is still way over the 55,000 word requirement for a volume.

I promised Prof. Rene Alburo a day of going over the edits to my draft as well as the preface and bibliography. That was Dec. 29, 2009. As of this writing, it seems a year has passed.

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Nonetheless, 2010 promises something good for the economy. The Metal Tiger Year in the Chinese horoscope is supposedly related to gold and money. Being an election year in the Philippines, lots of money will definitely change hands, especially in the middle of the year. After all, only a few politicians uphold new politics.

Let’s just hope this will not lead to post-election inflation.

The Metal Tiger Year, the website said, is also White Tiger Year. The White Tiger is considered a jinx in China. Still, this is the Philippines.

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