Binignit is the undisputed star of Kuwaresma—that solemn stretch of Holy Week when Cebuanos turn to reflection, restraint, and a pot of something sweet, thick, and deceptively complex.
A proper binignit is not just a dish. It is a menu in one pot: kamote, gabi, saba, langka, bilo-bilo, mais, sago, ube, and landang. That chewy, stubborn ingredient made from palm starch is slow to soften and even slower to blend. Each element demands timing, discipline, and a steady hand. No ingredient can dominate without throwing everything off balance.
In theory.
Because in Cebu provincial politics, the pot tells a different story.
The kamote and gabi are the old political families. Dense, entrenched, quietly absorbing everything around them. The saging are the populists. Sweet, visible, always ready for public consumption. The bilo-bilo roll, whichever way the current takes them. Adaptable, uncommitted, ever-present. The mais and sago fill the optics. Decorative, visible, but rarely essential.
Then comes the landang. Firm, resistant, and often out of sync when not handled properly. These are the rigid decisions, the policies that refuse to bend, the moves that sit in the pot without fully integrating. Noticed more for their texture than their contribution.
And of course, the langka. The controversies. Loud, lingering, impossible to ignore. They define the aroma long after the ladle has passed.
Case in point, the controversial tax discount granted to APO Cement. A decision that, like an ill-timed ingredient, unsettled the balance of the pot. In a province already managing fiscal pressure, such generosity demands clarity, justification, and control, not confusion and aftertaste.
But the contradictions do not end there.
Why is it that Aldwin Emphaces was the one announcing a projected P12.5 billion provincial budget by 2027? On what determinant? Based on what assumptions? Are these projections anchored on actual revenue performance, or merely aspirational figures dressed for public consumption?
More importantly, can the province even meet this year’s targets?
Because the numbers do not seem to speak the same language. On one hand, officials talk confidently in billions, projecting growth and expansion. On the other, they trim what was once a billion-peso obligation to APO Cement down to roughly P200 million. That is not just a fiscal adjustment. That is a signal.
A signal that priorities may be shifting faster than explanations can keep up.
All of this is supposed to be held together by the gata, the administration. Smooth, steady, capable of absorbing pressure without breaking.
Which brings us to Pamela Baricuatro.
Governance, like coconut milk, is a test of absorptive capacity. The ability to take in competing interests, rising heat, and public scrutiny, and still produce something coherent. But what happens when the heat rises and the gata does not bind but begins to separate.
What we are seeing feels less like careful cooking and more like unmanaged mixing. Ingredients float without hierarchy. Decisions appear without sequence. And increasingly, governance leans toward performance. Brief, visible, shareable, rather than sustained, structural work.
TikTok ready, perhaps. But governance is not a highlight reel.
The APO Cement controversy, paired with ambitious budget projections, only sharpens the question. Is this leadership steering the pot, or simply reacting to whatever surfaces?
Binignit demands patience. It demands knowing when to stir, when to hold back, and when to ensure that no single ingredient overwhelms the rest.
Cebu today feels like a dish still negotiating its own recipe. Too sweet in parts, too rigid in others, and bound by a gata struggling to hold everything together.
And in the end, Cebu’s governance has become its own kind of binignit. Everything thrown into the pot, hoping the sweetness will hide the imbalance.
But binignit, like leadership, cannot be faked. You taste it immediately when the gata has split, when the landang stays hard, when one ingredient overwhelms the rest.
Perhaps this Kuwaresma offers more than ritual. Perhaps it offers a pause. A moment to step back from the noise, to reflect, and to ask whether governance has become performance rather than purpose.
Because if there is an action plan at all, it may begin not with another stirring of the pot, but with the discipline to stop, to think, and to finally cook with direction.