“LAPID WILL win 100 percent against Edong.”
It’s not even a year since the last elections and over two years yet to the next and already former 1st District Rep. Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin has decisioned the outcome of the mayoralty race in Angeles City.
Lapid is, of course, Sen. Lito Lapid aka Leon Guerrero, aka Bida ng Masa, ending his term in that now-not-so-august body in 2016. Edong is Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan, who bested Lazatin in the fi ght for city hall in 2013, and Top 8 in the World Mayor Prize.
Lapid’s reported purchase of a P16-million “castle” at Friendship Plaza in Barangay Pampang served as the awaited confi rmation to long-mongered rumors that he would run for Angeles City mayor in 2016. Now further affirmed – and taken to the extreme – by Tarzan’s sure-win testimony published here Tuesday.
Others readily dismissed Lazatin’s prognostication as some vengeful death wish for Pamintuan out of spite for the latter writing finis to the former’s political life. I don’t. I can’t. I won’t.
Tarzan is too astute a politician to allow himself to be ruled by the baser of the human instincts. For one, Lapid is still Lapid. Maybe, not anymore the invincible Leon Guerrero he once was, running roughshod on all opposition; he may be viewed as the miserable loser to Jejomar Binay in the Makati mayoralty polls in 2007, but Lapid still exudes enough cinematic stardust to mesmerize some die-hard fans.
By casting his lot on Lapid – “I told him I will support him” – Tarzan has already provided him with the campaign infrastructure, read: organization, that the Bida, a newcomer to the city – an interloper, snooty Angeleños sneer – sorely needs.
Then, most surely aware too is Tarzan of the long-time personal engagement of Lapid with the Nepomucenos. Lapid was all-toovisible at the Robin Nepomuceno campaign stage and all-too-vocal against Lazatin himself in the fight for the city mayorship in 2001 as to escape Tarzan’s notice. Hope I got the election year right there.
It came as no surprise then that Robin’s wife Cecille, barangay chair of Cutcut, was also among the very few – along with Lazatin – power guests at the blessing of Lapid’s castle last weekend whence emanated the former Cong’s portentous pronouncement.
A given, as if you didn’t know: Angeles City had for so long been the domain of the Lazatins and the Nepomucenos.
The first generation of Don Rafael Lazatin and Don Paquito Nepomuceno impacted in the city and Pampanga too a storied rivalry born in the post-WW II era, spanned the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, waned in the ‘80s and interred only with their retirement from politics immediately prior to the grave in the 1990s. But readily taken up with equal gusto by the second generation of Tarzan on one hand, and Robin and Francis aka Blueboy, on the other.
While the heirs were shut out of 2013, significantly now, in the once-bitter-rivals’ first tactical alliance – Tarzan beaten by Pamintuan; Blueboy upstaged by upstart Joseller “Yeng” Guiao in the first congressional district – the third generation has started its own climb up the political ladder – Lazatin Junior aka Pogi in his first term, Robin’s hijo Bryan in his second at the city council.
The political clout of the families, separately, may have been stunted. But combined, still packs a wallop. Tarzan clearly sourcing his confi dence in Lapid’s sure win from there. Then comes the Iglesia ni Cristo bloc.
It does not take a political scientist to tab Lazatin’s loss in the mayoral contest to the shift of the INC vote to Pamintuan. As elections past has established as gospel truth: Only one with the INC blessing can ever become Angeles City mayor.
And Lapid holds an apparent birthright to the INC vote, given the centennial-celebrating church’s all-out support to him in all electoral contests he entered. Matter-of-factly, so specially favoured by the INC is Lapid that – at the risk of denting its vaunted invincibility in the polls – the church anointed his son, then incumbent Pampanga Gov. Mark Lapid, with their support in the 2007 polls where he ended poor third and dead last in the contest against proclaimed winner Eddie T. Panlilio and subsequent winner-by-protest Lilia G. Pineda. That, though, is a different movie, er, story.
Lazatin. Nepomuceno. INC. Enough multipliers to produce a Lapid victory. Where politics is static. Which, definitely, it is not. Mayor Pamintuan has Alexander Cauguiran. And that makes all the political dynamics in the city. Needless to say, all the difference too.
In the last elections, Edong virtually made history as the first ever politician to wage war simultaneously against the titans of city politics: against Lazatin for city hall, against Nepomuceno – Pamintuan quarterbacking for Guiao – for the congressional seat. And emerged winner.
Indubitable proof that even in alliance, the Lazatin and Nepomuceno dynasties can be defeated. But of course, as Cauguiran himself humbly admits, the 2013 triumph is not by Pamintuan alone. Readily attributing it to three tri-lettered acronyms – ABE, STL and INC, in no particular order of contribution.
ABE is the Partido Abe Kapampangan – the grassroots organization Cauguiran conceived, birthed, nursed and nourished to serve – and serve exceedingly well they did – as the corps of cadres of the Agyu Tamu movement.
Not without the incorporation of ideology in the campaign: the oppressive moneyed elite impacted in Lazatin and Nepomuceno, the oppressed masa finding their avatar in Pamintuan. As in “the history of all hitherto existing society is a history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf…” STL is small-town lottery, standing for the Pineda family, political patron nonpareil in Pampanga today. Enough said there. Yet, the INC is still deemed as the tipping point in the Angeles City mayorship.
So it all boils down to this? Whoever the INC blesses becomes winner? That it has long been happening does not mean it will happen forever. The so-called law of averages is ever there to reckon with. And then the issues.
The monumental failings of Lapid – as local government executive – are magnified everyday in the ever rising quarry collections of the Pineda administration – topping P1 billion last month, in but three years and nine months of Nanay as governor.
Not only has Lapid a measly P34 million in quarry revenues to show in the last term – already an improvement over the first two – of his nine-year tenancy at the Capitol, he too is maculated with the infamy of being the only Pampanga governor ever suspended – by the Ombudsman for the so-called quarry scam.
And while Lapid, as senator, has not been ensnared in the Napoles PDAF net, he has had his own 15 minutes of un-fame, okay notoriety, courtesy of the Inquirer’s bannering his own not-so-immaculate NGO in one Baby(?) Tolentino.
And then, there’s Lapid’s wife caught, tried, and convicted of dollar smuggling in the US. Not exactly the proverbial Caesar’s wife in the former Marissa Tadeo there. Not exactly the righteous Leon Guerrero in Lapid there.
Contrast this now with Pamintuan’s Best Mayor awards, both national and global and his administration’s Best Practices and Good Housekeeping recognitions. Yes, it is very right to ask: What has Lapid done in, to, for Angeles City that he should now merit its mayorship?
