I WATCHED Sunday’s inauguration of Edgardo Labella and Michael Rama as Cebu City mayor and vice mayor, respectively, from the sidelines. I supported the tandem in the recent electoral campaign and it was but fitting for me to be with their constituents on that day at the Plaza Sugbo in front of the Cebu City Hall. It would be good to mention that behind me was the Magellan’s Cross and the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño.
I have witnessed events like these a number of times and know the emotions prevailing especially among their main participants. When the activity ended, I resisted the urge to join the usual after-event gathering inside the City Hall. Only rarely do I join such gatherings. Instead, I loitered in the plaza together with the folk who were left behind for some reason or another while the others had long left.
Then I heard the voice. It was that of a woman with unkempt hair wearing a brown, blue shirt and shorts with dark brown design who got near a group of well-dressed people. “Asa man si Labella, bi,” she said as she peered at the faces of those gathered in front of her. I could not hear the gathered people’s response, but the woman turned around and smiled shyly, showing a set of unkempt teeth. “Mauwaw man ko uy, “ she said as she walked away. Was she told to go inside the City Hall?
The walkway in front of the vice mayor’s office, the now mayor’s former turf, was lined with vehicles. I saw a group of smartly dressed old men, most of them in barong, talking with each other. They had left the gathering and were preparing to leave. They and the middle class functionaries apparently were the people who hobnobbed with the new mayor. They were the faction of the elite who were triumphant over the other faction who supported Tomas Osmeña, Labella’s predecessor. They will be the ones who will surround the mayor and wall him from the real constituency who actually need government’s help.
The elite have the means to fend for themselves. But some of them need the government to advance their own goals, which is to protect their interests or further enrich themselves. Those in real need of government are people like that unkempt woman and the others, lowly City Hall employees talking about their future in the Labella administration among them, who were reduced to staring at the City Hall walls after the inauguration and wondering what transpired inside.
As I watched that unkempt woman looking for “Labella,” I remembered the peasants in the city’s mountain barangays, they who taught me many things about surviving without much help from the government and who became my adopted family in the old days. In a way, ordinary people--peasants, workers, semi-proletarians--look like her outwardly. They have the same need, the same hopes.
I supported Labella because I thought he could be the mayor who could finally help them not just survive but live decently. My confidence in him hasn’t wavered yet, but it pays to talk about walls and my wish for him to continue looking beyond these.