HOW will a Negrense fare against a Cebuano?
If this is basketball, the Cebuanos will lord it over us in numbers for players in the big league.
Although we still have James Yap, future ex-husband of Ms. Kris A, as the top 3-pointer in the PBA and Sta. Lucia Realty coach Boyet Fernandez as two of the most successful basketball players from Negros, still our neighbors across the other strait, are bit ahead.
But what we are referring to now is the change of leadership in the GSIS or the Government Service Insurance System.
Ex-Neg. Occ. Gov. Daniel Lacson is a lucky man. He replaced someone who is hated by the government retirees. Bitay, you bet, can do it. He knew what post to take, just like what he did during Ninoy's wife's term.
If Bitay make immediate changes to ease the plight of former and current government workers, he will be a hero in shining armor.
Meanwhile, Winston Churchill may be rolling over his coffin for having a "tokayo" whose family name is a byword in every household.
But like the cigarette Winston, Garcia evaporated like a thin smoke, without getting cancer himself. Despite the black ashes he spewed while king of a smoke-belching entity like GSIS (more pautot while camouflaging their inadequacy with computer alibis), nobody dared touch him.
The protesters could only got back by torching his effigies every chance they had. With a backer like that of a record-breaker, who liked to cling to power by becoming a congresswoman after her presidency expired, Garcia was like skunk.
There were so many accusations hurled on Winston before but nobody wants to come near. Now with his great protector reduced to a solon (the first in the Guinness Book of Records perhaps), the rest of the straight guys in Congress may look over for those "miracle" transactions he had.
The Luna paintings, the stocks in investment houses, other exposures using GSIS fund, these were but a few of his popular undertaking.
We maybe part of a people with short memories but our patience is very very long. In dialect, "laba laba pasensya".
Bitay and the rest of the P Noy Cabinet will have a lot to do in restructuring the ills of the previous administration in GSIS.
As patience is a virtue that carries a lot of wait, we may be in for another sleeping snoring time hoping for the good news to come.
If the changes in the GSIS came in late, be happy for the thought that the Negrense chief is not like Winston.
For all you know, Bitay will be issuing an order for GSIS satellite offices in towns and cities just to appease those sickly, weak, paralyzed, irritable and confused retirees.
At least, these people will no longer take a long trip just to show their old faces and get stressed at Bacolod office.