THE coming 2022 elections will be wide open and it will still be up to many possibilities. Since this is a presidential election, the tendency is that those who may run for national positions will need to put up local candidates who will carry them, especially that the province and Bacolod is one of the many vote-rich areas in the country.
Someone asked me about the Love Negros (LN) and United Negros Alliance (UNegA) coalition. According to him, does it follow that there’d be an absence of contest in the coming 2022 elections at the local level? I replied to him in a safe way considering the many possibilities that may happen as we near the filing in the month of October. To think that filing is fast-approaching and time really flies, the months to come would be filled with surprises in the municipal and city, if not exactly in the provincial level.
As the rule in politics is always flexible, that means anything can happen. I believe there would be aspirants in the towns and cities who may not identify themselves with the coalition but still would request that they’d be left without the interference by those at the top. Or another scenario would be that the incumbents will remain the candidate of the coalition, while the aspirants will run without open support from coalition officials. Yet, I am sure behind that they will ask for support that officials could not afford to say no. They can summon the past elections in 2013 and 2016 where the rule is to extend reciprocity to those who really showed up loyalty.
Mayor Bading Escalante once said that they will sit down one day to look at the situation at the local level. Maybe, the coalition wished to avoid what happened in 2019 that while there is alliance at the provincial level, there is none in the towns and cities.
Earlier there are reports of some areas known to have possible rivalries in the coming elections. As Toboso mayor Richard Jaojoco is on his last term, his wife, Madonna, will run for mayor. Jaojoco is identified with UNeGa who may not be willing to give the mayorship to someone coming from the LN. With the death of consultant Marton Cui, who was reported to be eyeing the mayorship, the LN side in Toboso has not floated somebody to challenge the wife of Mayor Jaojoco.
In Isabela town, there is a report that Vice Mayor Jr Malabor will challenge the incumbent mayor, Irene Montilla. Irene is the widow of the late mayor of Isabela, Quito Montilla, while Jr Malabor is the son of the late mayor and board member Nato Malabor.
I heard many other aspirants in other areas, who at this time, maybe feeling the pulse. It is just proper that elections can just be at the sideline while efforts are all put to fight the Covid-19.
It could be for our good that while all this had not yet taken off because of the pandemic, at the provincial level, they seemed to have solved the placement of the two main political groups. This has a basis in the past when there is cooperation among provincial officials since 2001 up to 2010 under the Maranon-Zayco tandem, and pursued in the elections of 2010 in the Maranon-Alvarez tandem.
We will see how the coalition officials would take the weights of their decision-making at the height of the inevitable contest in the towns and cities. And by then, we will see how the situation would allow us to enjoy our right to choose while the government is rolling out the vaccines against Covid-19.