One sad thing about celebrating your 60th birthday if you are an employee is that you automatically sever your ties with your employer as a retiree. That was one of the late Gabby Malagar’s rants on Facebook when he retired a few years ago. So before I turned 60 just a few months ago, I already viewed the landscape for opportunities beyond a full-time journalism job. Since the elections were around the bend, I decided to join a political campaign.
My life after college and the friends I have made since then encompass two phases, one was my activist and rebel days and the other the years when I was a full-time journalist. Those phases involved viewpoints that look at the Pinoy brand of politics with a critical eye. After I plunged into the recent electoral campaign, I was able to view the local version of Pinoy politics with a more sympathetic eye.
Lest you put too much premium on that claim, I was but a mere cog in the electoral campaign, joining the many other faceless and nameless campaign workers who do the bidding of the political leaders and strategists. I was fine with that because what I wanted was merely to get a better perspective of the game politicians play.
I didn’t reckon with what would happen after that, of course. I got to meet new personalities during the campaign and forged friendships just like those times when I was an activist and later a full-time journalist. Many of the campaign personalities are now in government simply because the candidate they supported won. To the victors go the spoils of war.
One of those personalities is now the city administrator Floro Casas Jr. I would say he is to Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella what Bimbo Fernandez was to former mayor Tomas Osmeña. Like Fernandez, Casas carried much of the burden of the Labella campaign on his shoulders. No wonder he has been entrusted with the most important City Hall job now.
Casas celebrated his 40th birthday the other day and while I don’t usually go to sosyalans, I went to his party for two things: to observe and to finally be on the hill I only view from afar when I go up the other hill nearby that is not far from our residence (that should be the subject of another column). Labella’s mantra in the campaign was change. I could just imagine how the aftermath of that campaign has changed the lives of Casas and the others who worked hard for a Labella win.
I saw the mayor, of course, so too the now City Council veteran Raymond Alvin Garcia and the council’s new entrant, Donaldo Hontiveros. I saw Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Dino and his pal, Kenneth Cobonpue. It would have been good to know what they were mostly talking about but I was but in the periphery. Was Vice Mayor Michael Rama invited? I didn’t get to ask that but I also didn’t see him there. Or did he come earlier?
Casas was, before the election, but a partner in Labella’s law office. Now he is the “little mayor” and is being treated by people that way. Ahh, change--and I say a well-deserved one.