IT’S FIESTA time. The circus is back in town. How else explain the proliferation of clowns and mutants, each with his own antic ranging from the ridiculous to the stupid, the all wanting to get your worth not so much in money as in votes.
Yes, the campaign for the barangay and sangguniang kabataan elections has reached fever pitch, the candidates in delirium, if not in epileptic fit.
So what else is new? Constancy and consistency – in form, in substance, in conduct, in everything practically, even in the candidates – are the hallmarks of barangay elections. So much so that when you see one barangay election, you’ve seen them all, no matter the years separating them. As this piece published here on October 24, 2007 verily shows.
PASSIONATELY PERSONAL. That is a natural course in barangay elections as everybody there, at the least, knows everybody. That is if everybody is not related, by affinity or consanguinity, to everybody.
Thus the heat of the campaign: the stake, prized as though it were the presidency of the country itself.
It does come as no surprise but as a matter of course for blood to lose its thickness in barangay politics: brother fights brother, mother fights daughter, father fights uncle, in-laws fight one another, all affinities rendered asunder.
With family wealth dispersed and doled out to the voters, barangay elections not only help the local economy in terms of liquidity but serve as great social equalizers.
Personalan, truly makes the essence of these elections. This is most evident in the names put up by the candidates.
In my barangay in Sto. Tomas town, there is a Payok running against a Pusa. (An also-ran in 2007, Payok is again in the running today.) Elsewhere, there is a Manok, a Bulik and a Tatso too. (A Dumalaga would have ensured gender equality.)
I saw a Tuyo running for kagawad somewhere. And a Menudo too. Too bad my friend Paksi, a former town councilor, opted to retire from politics altogether after he lost in this year’s (2007) polls. They would have provided some culinary delight to the polls.
It is in barangay polls too that handicaps are celebrated to highlight candidacies, not deficiencies. There is a Putot, a Duling – not Mayor Boking Morales’ ever-loyal lieutenant, a Salapi (one with extra digits, not money), and a Tikol and Pile in the running.
(Kapamilya, the ABS-CBN blurb has long been appended to names of candidates. This time though, some wannabes went into the details, directly referring to familial placements – a Kuya and an Ate, a Tito and a Auntie, a Bunsoy, and taking the cake – a Bingot. Of the latter, what voter in his right mind would elect an infant?)
Candidates truly come in all shapes and sizes: Taba, Payat, and Sexy; Tangkad and Pandak. In all shades of color too: Baluga, Puti, Brown and Tagpi, as one afflicted with vitiligo had for a political moniker. No Blue there, he being already elected Angeles City mayor. (This is circa 2007 remember. Nepo got beaten more black than blue in May 2010.)
No Tarzan too, he being elected congressman. No Cheetah here. But once there was in Quezon City in the late comic Rene Requiestas who was a kagawad.
Strongman Atlas runs in Dau, Mabalacat. (He is running for re-election against a scion of the now departed Anthony Dee.) I wonder if there’s a Hercules somewhere? I am most certain though there are a lot of Samsons out there.
Personalan, so the name-calling gets real nasty.
Junior Sablay? Still too kind, make that Marcoracot, a penny-ante plunderer, a petty Marcos. (Is this the same guy who ran and lost last May with a rival candidate who sported the same nickname?)
The “man you love”? Make that the manyilab (arsonist).
A candidate left by his wife becomes a pindeho. One with only a mother is a putok sa buho. Reasons don’t matter here. It’s all perception. It’s all deception.
Still, there’s much in one’s moniker that makes the big difference in the polls. There was once in a barrio in San Fernando where the contending candidates were named Apostol, Jesus and Satanas. Guess who won?
Satanas and Apostol lost. And the voters rued their choice.
Barangay elections, as in any other political contest, is no simple name game. Keep the passion but don’t leave out the reason.
Yes, the campaign for the barangay and sangguniang kabataan elections has reached fever pitch, the candidates in delirium, if not in epileptic fit.
So what else is new? Constancy and consistency – in form, in substance, in conduct, in everything practically, even in the candidates – are the hallmarks of barangay elections. So much so that when you see one barangay election, you’ve seen them all, no matter the years separating them. As this piece published here on October 24, 2007 verily shows.
PASSIONATELY PERSONAL. That is a natural course in barangay elections as everybody there, at the least, knows everybody. That is if everybody is not related, by affinity or consanguinity, to everybody.
Thus the heat of the campaign: the stake, prized as though it were the presidency of the country itself.
It does come as no surprise but as a matter of course for blood to lose its thickness in barangay politics: brother fights brother, mother fights daughter, father fights uncle, in-laws fight one another, all affinities rendered asunder.
With family wealth dispersed and doled out to the voters, barangay elections not only help the local economy in terms of liquidity but serve as great social equalizers.
Personalan, truly makes the essence of these elections. This is most evident in the names put up by the candidates.
In my barangay in Sto. Tomas town, there is a Payok running against a Pusa. (An also-ran in 2007, Payok is again in the running today.) Elsewhere, there is a Manok, a Bulik and a Tatso too. (A Dumalaga would have ensured gender equality.)
I saw a Tuyo running for kagawad somewhere. And a Menudo too. Too bad my friend Paksi, a former town councilor, opted to retire from politics altogether after he lost in this year’s (2007) polls. They would have provided some culinary delight to the polls.
It is in barangay polls too that handicaps are celebrated to highlight candidacies, not deficiencies. There is a Putot, a Duling – not Mayor Boking Morales’ ever-loyal lieutenant, a Salapi (one with extra digits, not money), and a Tikol and Pile in the running.
(Kapamilya, the ABS-CBN blurb has long been appended to names of candidates. This time though, some wannabes went into the details, directly referring to familial placements – a Kuya and an Ate, a Tito and a Auntie, a Bunsoy, and taking the cake – a Bingot. Of the latter, what voter in his right mind would elect an infant?)
Candidates truly come in all shapes and sizes: Taba, Payat, and Sexy; Tangkad and Pandak. In all shades of color too: Baluga, Puti, Brown and Tagpi, as one afflicted with vitiligo had for a political moniker. No Blue there, he being already elected Angeles City mayor. (This is circa 2007 remember. Nepo got beaten more black than blue in May 2010.)
No Tarzan too, he being elected congressman. No Cheetah here. But once there was in Quezon City in the late comic Rene Requiestas who was a kagawad.
Strongman Atlas runs in Dau, Mabalacat. (He is running for re-election against a scion of the now departed Anthony Dee.) I wonder if there’s a Hercules somewhere? I am most certain though there are a lot of Samsons out there.
Personalan, so the name-calling gets real nasty.
Junior Sablay? Still too kind, make that Marcoracot, a penny-ante plunderer, a petty Marcos. (Is this the same guy who ran and lost last May with a rival candidate who sported the same nickname?)
The “man you love”? Make that the manyilab (arsonist).
A candidate left by his wife becomes a pindeho. One with only a mother is a putok sa buho. Reasons don’t matter here. It’s all perception. It’s all deception.
Still, there’s much in one’s moniker that makes the big difference in the polls. There was once in a barrio in San Fernando where the contending candidates were named Apostol, Jesus and Satanas. Guess who won?
Satanas and Apostol lost. And the voters rued their choice.
Barangay elections, as in any other political contest, is no simple name game. Keep the passion but don’t leave out the reason.
