Shockers on a Sunday Morning

SEVERAL things caught my eye this morning. First, Sara Duterte, fist-packing daughter of Davao strongman Duterte, refused to file CoC for a Congress seat, defying her father’s wish (order?). The old man Duterte is reclaiming his seat as mayor of Davao City, a seat held for him by Sara while the old man steered from behind as Sara’s vice-mayor. Having gotten the election prohibition of not having more than three terms in a row out of the way, Duterte was bent on claiming the Congressional seat now populated by Karlo, the son of former House Speaker Prospero Nograles.

Second, Chavit Singson of Ilocos Norte, while still eligible, is no longer running for re-election as governor, but his son Ryan Luis is running in his stead. Chavit, another pistol-packing politician whose family has ruled Ilocos Norte for 42 years, has told a reporter that he is seeking on focusing on his many businesses. Chavit is also famous for having as pet a real live tiger, as well as for that past brouhaha about having beaten up his mistress of almost two decades upon his discovery that she was playing with fire with a certain actor hunk. That too was played live on TV. [Just an FYI, Chavit’s story is included in Julie Yap Daza’s second book on Mistresses, available at the National Book Store.]

Third, that President Pnoy has categorically stated that Clark International Airport was not in the pipeline to become the next international airport because of its distance of 80 kilometers from Manila. I think this sucks. Has not he DoTC considered that there are (present and potential) passengers (around 22 million of them) north of Manila who do not want to be inconvenienced by the deadly traffic congestion of EDSA leading up to the NAIA? I myself, who live half the time in Quezon City, find it longer in terms of travel time to go to the NAIA in Parañaque (at least 1 and a half hours on a Saturday morning), rather than to Clark International Airport (one hour and 15 minutes from Katipunan). The ride to Clark is infinitely more pleasant, blanketed by a carpet of green fields, and a lot kinder to the lungs than heavily polluted EDSA.

The above-mentioned news bits are from the Oct 7 Sunday issue of the PDInquirer.

And from Sun.Star Pampanga comes the news that Board Member Fritzie David-Dizon has also announced that she is no longer running for re-election but will quit to ostensibly spend more time with her young children. That, to me, is laudable. Kids at a young age need a mother’s attention.

Which leads us to the shocker of them all -- a breaking news since yesterday, bannered on the PDI and I’m sure most newspapers: Leni Robredo, who became a household word since the untimely death of her very well-loved and honored Jesse, has consented to be the Liberal Party bet for a congressional district. After saying many times in the recent past that she’d rather not dip her feet in dirty political waters (adjective mine), and that she’d want to focus more on mothering her three daughters, she has finally succumbed to the call—of the Liberal Party. She is called the “reluctant candidate”, but Leni, who was, last I heard before this latest news, was headed for the judiciary, is not exactly new to the campaign trail. According to an article written by Gemma Corotan Robles in the PDI, widow Leni was her late husband’s campaign manager. Good luck to Mrs. Robredo, not for her candidacy because at this stage she is unbeatable, but for her dual role of politician and mother, the youngest of who is 12. She would have to shuffle her time between Congress in Quezon City, and Naga. The question, for me, is: Where will her younger children study? I understand the eldest is already Manila-based and working. And the bigger question: What could have made her decide on this life-changing move?
The Liberal Party headed by Mar Roxas has been busy fielding candidates for the 2013 elections, obviously as groundwork for the presidential elections in 2016. They may have struck gold in Leni Robredo, but I do think they bombed in the case of former priest (he has been defrocked, hasn’t he?) Ed Panlilio. Aside from his dismal performance as governor, nobody can fight Gov. Lilia ‘Nanay’ Pineda at this point. The good Nanay has been a tireless public servant, spending, I hear, from her own (or husband’s) pocket a lot of times to help her constituents in need. She is doing such a good job that she may not need to campaign at all to win again.