A MAJOR indicator that the Mandaue giant political clans that fought in the 2016 election, the Cortezes vs the Ouanos, have already forged an alliance is the way their respective drumbeaters lunged at each other on Facebook.
Posted photos of Jonas Cortes for city mayor and Enmarie "Lollypop" Ouano-Dizon for congresswoman, along with that of Nerissa Soon-Ruiz for, possibly, vice mayor, were not a formal announcement but it's a clear signal. The opposing trumpeters and the verbal exchange between them made that so. Anytime between now and the deadline for filing of COCs or certificates of candidacy (October 11-17, minus the Saturday and Sunday), confirmation may come.
Rewind to the 2016 election when Lollypop was battling Luigi Quisumbing for mayor and Jonas Cortes was supporting Luigi.
The Cortes-Quisumbing alliance and the Ouano family were trading diatribes and insults through their respective propagandists. Even fiercer and more bitter was the fight in 2007 when Jonas broke the decades-long, uninterrupted control of the Ouanos (by father Pedong and son Ted) by beating Jonkie Ouano, the clans' bet for mayor.
Memory of lamp posts
Jonkie's dynasty-shattering defeat and the humiliating charges filed against Ted for the lamppost scandal seem to have been shelved to the back of their minds. And Nerissa Soon-Ruiz was badly beaten by Jonas in the 2010 mayorship fight.
That, tucked with the memory of lampposts public shaming and the harsh words said by and among them -- Jonas, Soon, Lollypop and Jonkie -- seem to be now just a thing of the past. If the reported alliance would push through and hold, all of them would be training their guns on Luigi.
News tickers that don't tick
[1] President Duterte's health: The president does not have cancer. Good news. But the source is not Duterte's doctor, personally given or stated in a medical bulletin. It was Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) acting chief Eduardo Ano.
Ano told reporters that Duterte told the Cabinet members during a Cabinet meeting Monday (October 8) that the result of the test "was negative, the one where they took samples from his intestines." That's double telling there or double hearsay: from the doctor to Duterte to the Cabinet members. It wasn't even the health secretary who broke the news.
[2] Harry Roque's running for senator: Was he "burned" by the president so he won't run? Developments say Roque was offered the post of press secretary to head the Presidential Communication Operations Office (PCOO), which would be converted into Office of the Press Secretary, so he would stay as presidential spokesman and at the same time as head of the would-be-reinvented communication arm of Malacanang. Roque had to be embarrassed publicly: made to appear bad in his job so he'd continue doing it but not run for senator, which, to Duterte, he would lose anyway.
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