Thursday, June 07, 2007 Diaz: The greatest conqueror By Cris Diaz
AFTER the election fever subsided, emotion remains high especially among losers.
There are some leaders and supporters particularly those who may have contributed a little amount of "hard earned" money who gnashed their teeth while blaming others for bad fate.
But one should understand that an election is a gambling - a gambling of big time gamblers.
An informer said that a group of known businessmen in the locality met almost every night in some nook and cranny in the city to play card games. Some, the informer said, easily loses P200,000 to P500,000 a night!
I just wonder where the hell these people get their money to gamble. Unless, you were the sole winner of the recent P126 million lotto draw, losing P500,000 is something.
But spending P500,000 on elections is peanuts! I heard that a local candidate had almost P100 million in election chest but lost it somehow. He never grumbled but just wondered what happened.
I remember a local candidate some 10 years ago who spent P5 million on elections day but still lost in the electoral fight. He was perplexed how he lost with the money he let go on elections day.
Now, I heard that some financiers of local candidates are up against the heads of some trusted people who dealt with a group to ensure their candidate wins.
While there is no tested formula in winning an election, both parties agreed to spend some "operation money" on condition that both should work together to attain their goals.
Notwithstanding, the candidate lost. An assessment of the situation boiled down to neither one accepting fault that leads to their defeat.
Now, they're trying to recover money spent saying it was hard earned. Of course, there is no argument that that "election money" was hard earned.
Yet, to deny what has been agreed or dealt with is unfair. And, to accuse anyone of profiting from an operation money is absurd.
How could one recover an election fund purportedly spent on a covert operation? It should be noted that even the government could fail after spending millions of pesos on some covert missions.
Thus, gunning after a person's neck for failure to recover election funds considered "spent" is relatively unfair and unjust.
How many candidates lost a lot of fortune every elections day? How many candidates spent money to win the trust of unknown supporters but still lost?
But, we never heard of one among the many candidates running amuck by killing suspected supporters in a bid to recover "hard earned" money?
It is understandable `though that when one loses in any game, much more, in an electoral exercise emotions are high.
More often than not, losing in an election sometimes drives one to blame innocent people suspected of stashing away "hard earned money."
But despite all these humdrums and mental agony, there is always a time to retrospect.
Thus, when one is humbled to accept defeat, one displays the spirit of the greatest conqueror of them all. We believe these people are the real winners in the mid-term elections this year.
Cris Diaz is adjudged "Best in Column Writing," the Rotary Club of Metro Cagayan de Oro, 2000. cris_d1954@yahoo.com.
