Heroes in Rama initials
YOU know what “MLR” initials stand for? Some people in the crowd at Cebu City Hall’s observance of National Heroes Day, November 30, shouted, “Michael Lopez Rama.” He said, “Magellan, Lapu-Lapu and Rizal. “ That’s why his preferred hero is Rizal, he said, although Andres Bonifacio, whose statue stands at the site of the celebration represents all the heroes of the country.
A Bonifacio fan is Councilor Joel Garganera, head of the city’s Emergency Operations Center, who said he never skipped the city’s National Heroes Day fete, which highlights the heroism of Bonifacio. He wondered if Bonifacio’s bolo was as sharp as that of “Panday,” the character he assumes even when it’s not election season.
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As job-order workers
FIRST, Mayor Rama said he wouldn’t “rock the boat.” Then he said he had to replace coterminous appointees of the late Mayor Edgardo Labella and told them not to report for work until after evaluation. The reason: he must have trust and confidence in the people working with him.
Tuesday, December 1, at a press-con, Rama said they can stay but as job-order workers and can’t choose the position they fill. There are reportedly only 12 such coterminous employees. He was a bit pissed off that, as a former human resources manager, he didn’t have the exact number of regular employees and casual and job-order workers and “most important, where they are.”
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Labella group 'underestimated'
MAYOR Rama sounded like he was still defending himself and Vice Mayor Donald “Dondon” Hontiveros against criticism they were in a hurry to take over City Hall as permanent successors. He said, again, it was “by operation of law.”
Former city administrator Floro Casas Jr., who during a pre-funeral speech last Friday, November 26, said the Labella family and supporters would come out with “something big in the next few days,” posted this Facebook message Wednesday: “Suffer the consequence? You mistakenly underestimated the Edgar Labella group. #Ehhem.”
Still no direct naming, “padungog-dungog gihapon.”
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Dr. Heyrosa talks about her parents
IN a post from the “Doc Tess Heyrosa for Cebu Vice Governor Movement,” the candidate addressed newspaper columnist Atty. Josephus Jimenez for writing that the doctor was “resigned to losing” the race. He is “sorely misinformed,” she said, May 9 “is still far away.” She intends, she said, to “put up a fight every day” until election day. She knows she is fighting against “a big NAME and a big political pedigree.” “I have neither a big name nor was I born to a chief justice of the Republic. But I am my parents’ daughter. They were working-class, salt-of-the-earth types, an engineer and a teacher... the backbone of the nation. And I inherited their backbone.”
She was 18, she said, when she won (“by the skin of my teeth,” by five votes) her last elections, which must be the supposedly apolitical Sangguniang Kabataan competition. She said she’d been fighting “like a scrappy underdog all my life.”
She can say that, about being an underdog, again. She had gone through an SK election while her rival in 2022, Hilario “Junjun” Davide II had gone through “big-boys” fights, including city councilors’ races in Cebu City and two governorship matches. In awareness/recognition” alone, she trails far behind Junjun, by the simple fact that she has not been on the public stage as long as the former governor and now vice governor has.
Doc Tess would be a David taking down a Goliath of a Davide if she’d win. It would help if the province voters would know more about her than what she has told them so far. It might take more than the figurative slingshot to fell Junjun.
Atty. Jimenez in his November 26 column in The Freeman said in part that “while Cebuanos are sure to reelect three competent and committed leaders,” Governor Gwen Garcia, Vice Governor Junjun Davide and Mayor Mike Rama, our informal survey says that Leni Robredo will win...” The column was largely about why Leni would win in Cebu. The short comment about Doc Tess, with Atty. Josephus not naming her, said Junjun will win in all towns and cities and in all districts. “He will even win in the barangay and election precinct of his opponent... His election is the most foregone conclusion, even accepted by his rival.”
She hadn’t met the lawyer-columnist, which, she said, must be the reason he got the “wrong impression.”
Doc Tess still has the time, as she said, to change all that.
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