Friday, May 09, 2008 Wenceslao: The Mike Rama-Joy Young option By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
THE popular card game for gamblers in the old Sitio Kawayan in Sambag 2 when I was growing up was piyat-piyat. That was replaced years later by chikicha. I stayed around piyat-piyat sessions in the neighborhood long enough to be able to learn its basics. No, I didn’t become a gambler simply because, aside from money being scarce, I hated losing.
Piyat-piyat is a game where one is given a set of cards to arrange (sorry, I am an amateur writing about this, but for this column’s purposes that will suffice). The point is to make the best possible hand out of your cards no matter how limited their values are. It’s called bahig by our neighborhood gamblers, and some do it faster than the others.
When I heard Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña announce Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan’s (BOPK) bets for mayor and vice mayor for the 2010 elections, piyat-piyat came to my mind. Too early to complete the bahig, I thought, considering that 2010 is still two years away. And not all the cards have even been dealt, so things are premature.
But there’s an entertainment value to this exercise started by the mayor, conjuring the thrill like what a piyat-piyat player feels in the bahig. The arranging and rearranging of the cards to ensure a winning hand is the challenge. The point is, the pairing of Vice Mayor Michael Rama and former councilor Joy Young is but one of the many options.
While BOPK is Tomas Osmeña, I am sure other party leaders have differing opinions on how the slate in 2010 should pan out. The BOPK is an amalgam of foot soldiers (or Osmeña loyalists) and ambitious politicians. And the mayor himself may still have BOPK outsiders, even relatives, in mind as possible bets to fill various open slots.
Some last term councilors, for example, are angling for higher posts, like those for vice mayor and House representatives. So rearranging the BOPK hand is not impossible because of the variables. For all we know, Rama or Young or both may end up running for Congress to give way to whoever will be the next anointed for the two top city posts.
But Osmeña’s intention to float this early the names of Rama and Young as BOPK bets for mayor and vice mayor was obvious. Rumor about the mayor asking his wife Margot to run in his stead is being spread around by “insiders,” “political analysts” or plain mongers. Osmeña had to shot it down because it is wrong or preempted a plan.
Anyway, I doubt if the BOPK hand would be as strong as when it had the “aces” in Osmeña running for mayor, Raul del Mar for north district congressman and a pre-falling-out Antonio Cuenco for the south district. In poker, the piyat-piyat of the US (ha-ha!), that was “aces full.” The 2010 elections in the city won’t be like the 2007 version.
For one, the political opposition will be coming in better prepared after learning the bitter lessons of the 2007 wipeout. And without Osmeña, del Mar and Cuenco (all last termers) in the horizon, more opposition wannabes (hopefully qualified and therefore more winnable) will dare surface. Consider, too, that 2010 is a presidential election.
But again, 2010 is far away. The cards still need to be shuffled and dealt. Until then, maybe it pays if we focus on important concerns, like the economic crunch.
