There are numerous interesting contests for mayor in the seventeen local government units—16 cities and one municipality—that compose Metro Manila, but undoubtedly the ones that are generating the greatest interest are the contests to capture the city halls of two of the metropolis’s three most important cities, to wit, Manila and Makati.
The contest in Manila is a replay of the 2013 movie that saw former president Joseph Ejercito Estrada challenging the incumbent, former Senator Alfredo Lim. The 2013 contest appears to have been a grudge fight between the two erstwhile friends, with the former president alleging that Lim fired or treated badly a number of Estrada loyalists in city administration. Lim has denied the allegation.
Manila’s older voters are bound to be torn, when they cast their ballots, between giving and not giving vent to their sentimental attachment to the movie icon who was removed from Malacañang by an alleged “Edsa Revolution II” despite his impeachment trial’s not having been completed. For them, not voting for the man called Erap is bound to be a wrenching decision. After all, was it not only six years ago that they almost re-elected to the Presidency—he placed second to the son of the then-newly-deceased Cory Aquino—and eighteen years ago that they elected him president with the largest winning margin in the history of the Philippine Presidency?
For Manila’s younger voters Mayor Estrada is not without something to offer. Did not Estrada, in typically forthright fashion, act to declog Manila’s traffic by limiting the access of cargo trucks to the city streets, clear Divisorias streets, remove street vendors and act to modernize Manila’s public markets? All these steps were controversial, but they showed that the man in the Mayor’s chair was not asleep at his post.
Manila’s voters will have to consider, by way of contrast, what significant improvements former Mayor Lim introduced into Manila during his nine years in office.
Fred Lim can argue forcefully with Erap on the issue of accomplishments. But sentimental feelings for a movie icon are another matter altogether. These feelings are Lim’s nightmare. And they may well give the election to Mayor Estrada.
Apart from Makati’s being the nation’s financial capital, the reason why the contest for that city’s mayorship is generating much interest is obvious: it involves Vice President Binay and two of his children.
The Binay family has controlled Makati politics since 1986, and presidential candidate Jejomar Binay was the city’s chief executive for most of those 30 years. The family’s candidate in the 2016 race is three-term Representative Abigail Binay, who filed her certificate of candidacy for mayor upon the dismissal of her brother Jejomar Jr. in 2015 by the Office of the Ombudsman.
Abigail Binay’s opponent is Romulo Peña, the Liberal Party’s candidate. Peña was chosen by the opposition as vice mayoral candidate in 2013 on the strength of his popularity as president of Makati’s Liga ng mga Barangay. Considering the Binay family’s 30-year stranglehold on Makati’s politics and the fact that he has had less than a year to firm up his political hold on the city, Romulo Peña is facing a decidedly uphill fight. A 30-year-old political state of affairs cannot be turned around overnight.
But, who knows, after 30 years of Nognog and his clan—and all the publicized allegations of big-scale wrongdoing by them—Makati’s politics may be on the verge of change. The city’s voters may well think that the corruption-related discomfiture of Makati’s First Family, and the 2016 election, represent an excellent opportunity to throw out the Binays at last.
A famous contemporary statesman once said that “one week is a long time in politics.” Thirty years is a whole lot longer. Kid Peña is bearing that in mind and giving the May 9 contest his best.
E-mail: rudyromero777@yahoo.com