LOOK who's talking.
In what looked an in-your-face rebuke, Angeles City Vice-Mayor Bryan Nepomuceno called out his mayoralty rival Alex Cauguiran for engaging in a pot-and-kettle politics, which usually characterizes politics in this neck of the woods.
It's the pot calling the kettle black, a metaphoric combination of negativism and hypocrisy.
In fairness, Bryan didn't call him out in those exact words, but he might as well have, if you get the drift. Joshua is virtually portrayed as posturing like Jeremiah but is guilty of the sin of a Pharisee.
The nuanced message is not a broad sword but an ice pick poked the between the ribs.
Cauguiran has assailed the bidding of the city's P1.2 billion loan before publication. Nepomuceno answered by saying the non-publication issue doesn't make the ordinance illegal. (This paper published the ordinance last November 28). In other words, a non-issue.
Nepomuceno is a lawyer. That last time I heard, Cauguiran is not. Give the argument to the expert, although it's an educated presumption. Given how law is interpreted liberally ad infinitum in this country is another plus point for Nepomuceno's making his case.
But that is not the egregious error in Cauguiran's stance, per Nepomuceno. In Cauguiran's time, specifically from 1998 to 2005, Cauguiran did not raise the same issue of legality on several ordinances that were not published.
Why not then? Why now?
Simple questions deserve simple answers.
In Nepomuceno's view, it's par for the course as the election season becomes more and more toxic and nauseating. Controversy sells, he riposted. Or, considering the antecedent narrative, it could just be chip on the shoulder.
As it is, the frame shows the shoe changing foot, with one candidate alternately charging the other of playing footsies on what boils down to the nitty gritty of right or wrong -- legal and moral --- in governance.
What is emerging from this latest trading of brick-bats is the two mayoralty bets exchanging punches as it were with the real deal, Mayor Ed Pamintuan, pushing Nepomuceno to the center of the arena.
It's a deft political and p.r. maneuver. That leaves him, EdPam, out of the fight between Cauguiran and Nepomuceno and, from now on, hopefully out of harm's way, politically speaking.
Angelenos can expect more deep-diving issues between their mayoralty aspirants. Nepomuceno and Cauguiran, that is. A third candidate probably just watches on the sideline as the two engage in a mutual destruction of sort. See what happens.