IN CASE YOU HAD SKIPPED OR MISSED IT:
REPORT ON CEBU POLITICS, “Kampanya Serye” of ABS-CBN has featured Cebu and the segment, used in TV Patrol, is now on YouTube labeled “Cebu: Davide vs. Garcia sa Kapitolyo, Osmeña vs. Rama sa Kabisera.” What can a 4-minute 39-second report (by Alvin Elchico) give? Nothing much, except the 4Ws and the sound bites. Broadcast always picks up the sound bites.
The most compelling comes from Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama whose pronouncements, with standard Mikey gestures, demand attention: “I’m telling you again and again...” “The people of Cebu voted for me. (Others) cannot remove me, not even Malacañang.” Well, now we know that the Palace could and did, though his removal was only for two months and he’s baaaack.
Winston Garcia said, “I’m running because I have a program of government, not because I am a Garcia.” “This governor (referring to Hilario Davide III) has made business out of the ‘district hospitals.’” “Nothing is happening in Cebu. We used to be the premier province. Now we’re #3 or #4.”
Which Davide answered with a plain denial, no hint of theater, “just sound, no bite,” a broadcaster noted.
Tomas Osmeña’s comment on Mike’s suspension was off-camera, in Cebuano-Bisaya, with a graphic of the text translated into English, obviously lifted from local ABS-CBN News archives. His fight with Rama is billed by the ABS-CBN report as “Round Two of Bakbakang Osmeña-Rama.”
ROY SEÑERES’S LAST NOTE. The presidential candidate who dropped out of the race last Friday, Feb. 5 and died of cardiac arrest from complications of diabetes yesterday, was Roy Señeres. He was 68.
He was born in Mambusao, Capiz, obtained his elementary and high school education in Butuan, Agusan and resided for a long time in Compostela Valley and Lanao del Norte. No wonder that his last note to a friend was in Bisaya, not Cebuano-Bisaya but pretty close and Cebuanos could understand: “Tabangi intawon ko, Bai.”
Señeres was a party-list congressman of the OFW Family Club and former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, credited for helping save Sarah Balabagan from execution for murder. (Sarah, a Muslim OFW, in UAE killed her employer in 1994, stabbing him 34 times, alleging she was raped.)
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In the ballot
Comelec said it would’ve to study how to remove the name of Roy Señeres from the ballots. Did it mean it had already started printing the ballots? And Grace Poe’s name is in it too?
[bzzzzz@sunstar.com.ph or paseares@gmail.com]