Moment of truth

ON OR before October 5, the primal question of what CSF City Mayor Oca Rodriguez will aspire for shall have been answered.

Unraveling the Oca riddle may yet come sooner than that date when he announces his long-drawn out decision.

Will he run for Congress or for governor? This is a riddle within an enigma and wrapped around in the masking tape of secrecy.

Media has ceased asking Oca the same question in every opportunity. No one got a definitive answer from the secretive and elusive quarry.

Finally this week is the moment of truth for all politicians.

The closest the questers got to his real intent was the mayor’s cryptic reply to those who encouraged him to run for governor: “Nung taya kayo, taya ko,” or something to that effect.

I have asked several wise men in the province to help me decipher Oca’s open-ended statement. I got no satisfactory answer until I asked a kubrador in Angeles what he understood about it.

The lowly bet collector said it simply meant “don’t bet on it.”

Mayor Oca considers me a friend but I never dare ask him if he was running for congressman or the governorship. Why should I intrude one something personal and private?

I consider the query a silly question. There is saying that if you don’t want silly answers, don’t ask stupid questions.

For the past year or so, the wily and unflappable city mayor has successfully evaded that chicken-or-egg question.

Media workers had gotten tired of asking the same question knowing that they will not extract blood from a turnip.

People who are befuddled by Oca’s protracted silence over his next career move failed to appreciate the fact that the city mayor once came from the “underground.”

Kumander Jasmin, his nom de guerre, was never known to snitch on the “kilusan” even under duress and torture during his incarceration. Being secretive and tightlipped on vital matters of life and belief has become a second nature to the former freedom fighter.

This largely explains why Mayor Oca would not give anybody a hint of his next move. Why give the chance to his antagonists to prepare for an irrevocable fight?

Of course you can know a person’s intent by his language.

To the learned, language can be used both to communicate and to discombobulate. If Oca is a poet, in Jose Garcia Villa’s concept, he can “hold secret a bird’s flowering.”

What does Oca really want? We all have an idea what he likes to have. In Villa’s magical words, the mayor as romanticist “must be able to hide what it seeks, like a bride.”

(If DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo does not survive his accident, heaven forbid, may I be the first to nominate Oscar Rodriguez for the position of DILG secretary?)