“MAYOR OCA dispelled rumors that he is running for governor. He has set his sights on his congressional bid and return to the lower House in 2013.
There is no truth (to the report) that he will make the gubernatorial declaration during their EDSA Revolution commemoration.”
Not quite straight from the horse’s mouth, but close enough – from the horse’s mouthpiece – is that declaration, er, announcement by Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan of the electoral path three-term City of San Fernando Mayor Oscar Rodriguez has chosen for 2013.
Indeed, a big dud was all there was to the bombast that Oca would turn the anniversary celebrations of the EDSA Revolt into a stage to launch his gubernatorial ambition.
The temptation was there at the EDSA rites in Heroes Hall Saturday evening – civil society, clerico-political leaders, mass organizations from all of Pampanga’s four districts harangued by speakers into one reverberating voice of all-out support to Oca’s run for the Capitol.
Oca obliquely refusing to bite the forbidden fruit there and then with a challenge hurled to the assembly to bet their money where their mouths are, so to speak.
No, I was not there so I had to rely on the word of one most distinguished as a freelancer but hardly dignified as a freeloader.
Conspirators – Oca jokingly called those who egged him to seize the moment and throw the gauntlet at the governorship. So it was reported to me.
“As Mayor Oca told us, ‘Don’t believe in what is going around.’ If it does not come from him or me, it is not official. But for the record, Mayor Oca will run for the third district congressional seat and face the incumbent Dong Gonzales.”
EdPam painstakingly reassured the media of the veracity of his revelation, to the extent of disclosing a hush-hush powwow Friday night at his house between Oca and the powers-that-are in Pampanga that lasted way beyond the usual bedtime of all those present.
“How many mayors (in the third district) are there anyway? Five? During our meeting, mayors in Pampanga have professed their willingness to support Mayor Oca.”
So EdPam declared, blurring party considerations – Oca’s LP is in coalition with Dong’s NPC, while many mayors won as Lakas-Kampi – implying not so much a political détente as an accord forged between Oca and the other parties at the meeting.
EdPam left much to the prolific imagination of mediamen the nature of the “agreement” reached at his house that night of February 24. A provisional coalition? A tactical alliance? A strategic collaboration?
EdPam could only suggest some sort of a political rapprochement now obtaining between two entities that have not engaged in any connectivity, much less partnership in previous electoral exercises.
Whatever, it would not – most assuredly – sit well with Oca’s myrmidons, his sanctum sanctorum of moralists, EDSA 1 exclusivists, and good governance monopolists.
They who are most adamant in Oca’s sole – if not divine – right to the governorship, pertinaciously adhering to that so-called moral crusade launched in 2007 to save Pampanga from the stranglehold of the Evil One, no matter its ignominious crushing in 2010.
Unholy alliance!
So shall be damned any political bond Oca shall tie with the current Capitol administration.
Principled politics subjugated to personal exigency, if not to expediency!
So shall be denounced Oca’s abandonment of his gubernatorial aspirations.
Aye, how do you suppose the President will take even the slightest connection between Oca and Gov. Lilia G. Pineda?
Not so well? That will be an understatement.
A betrayal. That will be more like it. As in sleeping with the enemy.
That is if we go by the perceived bitterness of PNoy over anything connected with GMA.
It is a story told – its truthfulness affirmed at each retelling – that Clark Development Corp. President-CEO Felipe Antonio Remollo so got PNoy’s goat that he came to near-firing for a most mundane act of signing a memorandum of agreement with the governor for the establishment of some Market! Market! food center at the Freeport.
Consorting with the enemy. So was Remollo charged, reportedly.
It is not likely that PNoy will just let go of Pampanga – in the hands of a non-ally at the least, a perceived enemy at the most – that easily.
It is more likely that PNoy will exercise, indeed exert, presidential persuasion – with all appurtenances thereto – on Oca to make a go for the governorship.
Yes, I believe – really, I do with all my heart – EdPam in saying that Oca “has set his sights on his congressional bid and return to the lower House in 2013.”
So sorry, I do not see any finality in that though.
Can Oca – or anybody for that matter – say “NO” to the President?
