PRISCA Niña Mabatid is not new to controversy.
The first time I encountered her name was when singer-entrepreneur Eva delos Santos and her husband filed a libel complaint against her back in 2017.
The couple accused the owner of Pinoycare Visa Center of besmirching their reputation when the latter accused them of duping her into buying a townhouse the year before.
Mabatid said she purchased the unit from delos Santos only to find out that it had another owner. The Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office, though, junked the complaint a year later for lack of evidence.
In 2018, Mabatid ran for barangay captain of Mabolo. According to her, Mayor Tomas Osmeña had urged her to enter politics. But somewhere along the way, the mayor had a change of heart and decided to support her opponent. Despite this setback, she won.
To add insult to injury, the mayor asked her to leave Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK) when it was rumored that she was going against his bet for the Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) federation presidency.
Her expulsion from BOPK didn’t become official until after she and a male companion who later turned out to be her husband were caught on security camera having a heated argument with hotel security who mistook her for an escort.
Osmeña described it as embarrassing. “I have been mayor for 30 years. That is the worst example of somebody misbehaving. She is flaunting her power. That is not acceptable... She helped me (during the campaign period for the May 2016 elections) yes, but so did others and others don’t get drunk and punch people around.” Mabatid did go after the ABC post, but she, as we all know, lost.
That didn’t stop her, though, from gunning for a seat in the City Council in the midterm elections last May 13.
To her surprise—her words, not mine—she made it. She came in second after BOPK’s Nestor Archival in the north district.
It was no mean feat for someone who had been publicly humiliated through the security camera fiasco and denounced by the once invincible chief executive of Cebu City.
Had she been a man maybe she wouldn’t have had to go through all that. Instead, she’s a successful woman, who is not afraid to go after something she wants.
Now, a defeated poll candidate is saying the health cards she distributed during the campaign were not honored by a public hospital.
None of anyone’s business, Mabatid said in a Facebook post, since she will be using her own money to fund the program that offers free hospitalization and medicines, among others.
She has a point. After all, she is not officially a city councilor until July 1.