Scrolling down: Who's the "ex-future" vice governor wannabe who would've filled Agnes Magpale's slot in the Junjun Davide team? Clues: someone from the fifth, her district; someone whom Danao City Mayor Nito Durano must have promised to Davide. A new Davide-Magpale tandem reinforces need for Rep. Gwen Garcia's camp to have a VG bet from a bloc that backed Davide in 2016, to counter-balance the weight from the Durano force in the north.
BUT first, on the reported statement of President Duterte Tuesday (September 18) in Gamu, Isabela, visiting the wake of a Medal of Valor awardee: "I am myself a coward. I am afraid to die. I idolize everyone who is brave."
All that talk about killing others -- crime suspects, drug lords and addicts, enemies -- came from fear to die? Anyway, he said he'd wish "a heroic death" rather than "dying of old age or disease."
Meca couldn't make it
Cebu Vice Governor Agnes Magpale is saying now she'll run for reelection, her third term if she wins. Her reason for changing her mind: The arrangement on succession whom she had helped put up collapsed and she felt obliged to her party and her district to stay at Capitol.
Magpale didn't name the person who would've run for vice governor along with Governor Junjun Davide but from her explanation, it must be someone from her district, the fifth.
She would want the seat to go to someone who can help her district. Buzzed about for several months was the name Remedios Durano-Meca, daughter of Danao City Mayor Ramon "Nito" Durano. Nito, cousin of Magpale and chairman of Bakud (the local party Barug Alang sa Kauswagan ug Demokrasya), pleaded for Magpale to reconsider quitting politics. Nito must have felt he owed their alliance with Junjun: since daughter Meca, who heads the Cebu Provincial Drug Abuse Office at the Capitol, wouldn't be available, Magpale must put off her retirement plan.
So the insistence last July, "Di na lagi ko" (an actual quote the papers published) has become "Kausa na lang." One more would round off the three-term cycle and, maybe, start afresh in 2022 -- in the race for governor.
Effect of tandem
The return of the Davide-Magpale tandem, which carried the election for the Liberal Party in 2013 and 2016, may signify:
* The bulk of the Duranos in the fifth district most likely would go again for the team, with the likely possibility that a Durano could seek the governorship in 2022, when Junjun would reach term limit;
* A greater need for Representative Gwen Garcia to get a running mate from the bloc that went for the Davide-Magpale duo in 2016.
COA and fear of stairs
And finally, about that "joke" of President Duterte that they push off the stairs was anyone from COA who might be in the building. A COA employee was overheard saying, "It's already part of our safety drill: Watch out when you take the stairs."
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