They may not be vocal about it, but a lot of Mindanao-based businessmen are quietly rooting for Davao City Mayor Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte. If our history does not fail us, there has never been any president whose roots is from Mindanao. It’s mostly been people from Ilocos, the Tagalog region, Cebu and the Visayas who have had the pride and distinction of having produced a president. And now that there is that looming possibility that finally, someone from Mindanao could become president, ordinary locals and certainly business people want to make sure their candidate wins.
It’s a well known fact that Mindanao residents have a healthy “dislike” for Imperial Manila, with many of them convinced that they have only been getting token promises of help, and that when it comes to the affairs of this nation, they are at the bottom rung of the ladder as far as prioritization is concerned. But of course, big businessmen are hedging all their bets. They figure it will be less costly if they just contributed to all the winnable candidates instead of putting all their apples in just one basket, so to speak. After all, it never hurts to get a bit of insurance in case their real candidate loses for some reason.
While Duterte emerged as a survey frontrunner in Metro Manila (folks here are just plain tired of the continuing proliferation of crimes), he will be going through a rough patch. For one, there is the disqualification case filed by a radio broadcaster, with Senate President Franklin Drilon urging the Commission on Elections to decide on the disqualification case against him (as well as Senator Grace Poe) ASAP. Opinion is divided and suspicions continue to be strong that Filipino voters’ choices has been made for them—what with all the strong contenders like Duterte and Poe being slowly but surely edged out of the presidential race, says one of our buddies. We don’t also know if there is a deliberate effort to delay the disclosure of the final list of candidates that will be included in the ballots, as printing seems to have been postponed to January—timed so that the names of Duterte and Poe will no longer be included?
We’re sure many will agree if we say that Duterte makes the election season even more interesting since he’s not the type who holds his punches and will speak his mind. Even his interview with Karen Davila and Vic de Leon Lima had the former blushing and protesting “walang ganyanan Mayor” (roughly translated as, “let’s not get into that”) when, in a word association game, he uttered the word “delicious” when asked what he thought of Davila.
And now, the slaphappy Duterte has just started the ball rolling for a slapping challenge between him and Liberal Party bet Mar Roxas who successfully raised the hackles of the mayor when Roxas described the peace and order situation in Davao as a “myth”—an insult as far as Duterte is concerned because a major part of the mayor’s popularity is his ability to impose peace and order in his turf. The verbal warfare is escalating to the personal level, with Duterte alleging that Roxas lied about graduating from Wharton. An obviously miffed (though he managed to control his anger) Roxas retaliated by saying he will agree to be slapped if Duterte could prove it. If not—the LP bet will do the slapping.
Oh well, boys will be boys. At least they didn’t challenge each other into a slapping contest.
Lazada’s Online Revolution campaign nets $40 million
Online shopping is increasingly becoming popular, with more people preferring to shop in the comfort of their homes rather than to spend hours on traffic getting to the malls and standing in line to pay for their purchase. The recent Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales in the US for example posted a 10 percent decline for in store purchases, in contrast to the 18 percent upsurge posted for online sales.
And now, the Online Revolution campaign of Lazada—Southeast Asia’s bigest online shopping site—had record sales for its 3-day sale from December 10-12. Traffic spiked to an all-time high of 36 million visits with hordes of consumers happy with the online experience on Lazada sites and apps. The volume of orders reached one million—a 300 percent jump over the same period last year—as the annual event continues to spur the online shopping frenzy. With approximately 1.7 million items ordered, the campaign chalked up $40 million in Gross Merchandize Value (GMV) or overall sales in its three-day finale.
Mobile is king as it accounted for 60 percent of the GMV with more customers preferring to thumb through the deals and offers from their mobile gadgets. More than 30,000 sellers including over 600 global and local brands across different categories supported the campaign with exclusive launches and promotions. In the last three days, more than 300 flash sales and hundreds of thousands of deals were rolled out across the six countries.
Maximilian Bittner, CEO of Lazada Group, is certainly happy with the outcome, thanking the customers and sellers for the enthusiastic response to the Online Revolution campaign which has become “the biggest retail event of the year in Southeast Asia since its initial launch on 12 December 2012 as more consumers embrace online shopping. We will continue to enhance the customer experience and bring the best of online shopping through unbeatable assortment, great value and convenience,” Bittner said.
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