TOLEDO City Mayor John “Sonny” Osmeña running for third district congressman. Talisay City Mayor Eduardo Gullas wanting to get back the post of first district congressman. Former Bogo City mayor Celestino Martinez Jr. also wanting to get back his old post as fourth district congressman. Cebu City north district Rep. Raul del Mar running for reelection.
Two threads are common in the preceding paragraph. One, that all of the personalities mentioned filed their certificates of candidacy (COC) with the goal of making it again to the House of Representatives. The other, that all of them have seen better days as politicians. We would have added a third thread, except that it may not apply to all of them: they are all patriarchs of political clans.
Among the many features in the filing of the certificates of candidacy for the May 2019 elections is that of veteran politicians still seeking elective posts despite their old age and obvious physical limitations.
To be fair, this feature is not only true in politics. In other endeavors like sports, the question of when to call it a night is often left unanswered also. Successful boxers, for example, only retire when the loses have piled up or, in the sad case of the late Muhammad Ali, when an illness forces them to.
When the nonagenarian Juan Ponce Enrile filed his COC for senator, he talked about the difference between being an old athlete and being an old politician. “I am not going to wrestle with anybody physically, I am going to wrestle mentally,” he said. That could also explain why the names mentioned in the first paragraph want to be in Congress instead.
Apparently, lawmaking is a less bruising endeavor than being chiefs of local government units. They can’t be in a cruising mood when, say, they are mayors. Just ask Sonny O.
But there is one unflattering reason the veterans, or should we say, Old Guards, believe they can still be productive in Congress despite their old age: because they must have felt that the young ones who succeeded them there, generally, weren’t.