THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) has set for next month the filing of the certificates of candidacy for the May 2019 elections. No wonder the names of possible candidates and potential pairings, especially for local government positions, have become fodder for news.
Weeks ago, former mayor Michael Rama announced that he would give way to Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella as Barug PDP-Laban’s bet for Cebu City mayor against reelectionist Mayor Tomas Osmeña of the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK). He would run for vice mayor instead.
That put pressure on the BOPK to decide on who should pair with Osmeña against the former mayor. Osmeña has left hanging his choice for vice mayor, with rumors early on that he was wooing Labella as his running mate. With Labella’s decision to run for mayor, Osmeña now has to make his choice.
Interestingly, the names floated as BOPK’s vice-mayoral bet are not BOPK old guards, which says something about the ability of incumbent BOPK councilors to win an election. The latest name to surface is that of Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) president Franklin Ong, a known BOPK supporter but relatively new to city politics.
We already know about City Councilors Dave Tumulak and Mary Ann de los Santos, all products of Osmeña’s effort to raid the ranks of the opposition to gain control of the City Council. Of the two, de los Santos had a more bitter conflict with Osmeña before embracing him.
But this could be more of strategy than of the BOPK councilors’ ability to win a vice mayoral contest. By pitting either Tumulak or de los Santos against Rama, the hope could be that the BOPK bet would at least win over some opposition supporters to either of the two former opposition councilors.
Still the question of why the name of any senior BOPK councilor has not been floated as possible BOPK candidate for vice mayor is an interesting one. And it is even a question that the concerned BOPK councilors may be asking their own selves. Why Ong or Tumulak or de los Santos? Why not them?