FROM THE pages of People’s Tonight, Dec. 21, 1987, headlined The Final Conflict:
A storied political rivalry that started in the immediate post-war period is set to culminate with the January 18, 1988 elections.
Two aged and grizzled political warriors – ripe enough for the geriatric ward, their detractors scoff – are fixed to meet in a final conflict with the city mayoral post as plum.
Don Rafael Lazatin, 83, former governor, city mayor and assemblyman heads the UNIDO ticket against Don Francisco Nepomuceno, 74, former governor and immediate past city mayor who is running as independent.
Far from dotage despite their advanced age, both still pack political savvy and sting that have made them survivors in the changing national political landscape.
Both of the landed gentry, they have for decades dominated local politics, making Pampanga little more than a fiefdom titled between them.
Lazatin started his political career in 1937 as city councilor. Nepomuceno initially crossed his path in the late ‘40s. From then on, Pampanga politics was reduced to a two-family affair, notwithstanding Lingad, Valencia, Mendoza and Guiao who provided the interregnums in their dominion.
While some sort of a political détente existed between the two in the wake of the Ninoy Aquino assassination and went on through the Batasan elections in 1984 – where Lazatin and Nepomuceno’s wife ex-congresswoman and ex-governor Juanita ran and won – and the snap presidential polls in 1986, still the enmity between them remained.
The contest for the city mayoral post, no matter the outcome, is speculated to be the two’s final confrontation. Their advanced age, in all probability, would prevent any other battle in the future.
However, the storied rivalry may end in a denouement instead of a climax for both of them. As they are by no means the only serious contenders for the post.
Seeking to break the stranglehold of the Lazatins and Nepomucenos of Pampanga and Angeles City politics is Antonio “Bubusuk” Abad Santos, the PDP-Laban official bet.
Though “lower” in economic status than the old titans, Abad Santos, himself a scion of a former city mayor, Manuel, claims a mass base of people support enhanced by an organization of determined men and women transcending all sectors.
Then too is Gov. Bren Guiao’s “all-out support” for Abad Santos.
If only for the fact that Lazatin and Nepomuceno are locked in their final conflict, January 18 in Angeles will be worth watching. The entry of Abad Santos is an added political bonus.
Resurrecting the dead
ABAD SANTOS won of course and the two elders receded to oblivion dying in the ‘90s but not before burying the political hatchet and bonding in friendship.
Abad Santos himself was but a single-term interregnum, unseated by his vice Edgardo Pamintuan in 1992.
Pamintuan, against the stern warning of Rep. Carmelo “Tarzan” Lazatin that he would resurrect the already “politically dead” Nepomucenos, took in Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno for his vice mayor in 1995.
The 1998 polls proved Tarzan prophetic when Blueboy beat Pamintuan for the first congressional district seat.
And the Lazatin-Nepomuceno rigmarole in city and district polls continued – Mayor Tarzan opposed by Jepoy, Blueboy’s son; Congressman Blueboy challenged by Janet, Tarzan’s daughter. No direct face-off among the seniors there but inter-generational crossovers that ensured at least one of each clan remained in power. Which raised some suspicion of a modus vivendi agreed to by the dynasts themselves.
The classic 1988 “fi nal confl ict” was “reenacted” in 2007 with the re-electing Mayor Blueboy, challenged by Carmelo “Jonjon” Lazatin II and Bubusuk’s daughter Eleonor “Nong” Abad Santos.
Blueboy won that one.
In 2010, Pamintuan had his sweet vendetta in unseating Blueboy. Only to do a 1995 redux in taking the latter’s nephew, Brian Matthew Nepomuceno, for his vice mayor in 2013. How the then retired Tarzan nearly snapped his neck from its sockets at what he considered Pamintuan’s repetitive unlearning of history!
Pamintuan went the full nine yards, anointing Bryan as his heir to the mayorship, estranging, aye, spurning his longtime comrade Alexander Cauguiran who, in 2013, already sacrificed personal ambition to give way to Nepomuceno for the vice mayorship, and even marshalled their triumphant campaign. Easy to cast now Cauguiran in the Abad Santos role in 1988 – both being veterans of the parliament of the streets, for one — what with the head-on collision of the political dynasties’ third generation in Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr. and Bryan Nepomuceno for the city mayorship. This makes not only that classic conflict in politics but one class war!
In such wise, will lightning strike twice?
My esteemed friend and compadre, the erudite Max Sangil has all this figured out. And what he sees is nothing short of revolutionary.
