WE DO not know if it is part of a strategy by the local administration bet for Davao City Mayor Baste (i?) Duterte in not making any hint of what his campaign plan is. As of now all we know is that he is banking on the commitment of the barangay captains and other barangay officials who are clearly loyal to the leadership of Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio who is now a front-runner in the race for the country’s Vice Presidency. We are certain however, that whatever ace he has on his sleeves the Presidential son Mayoral candidate will be throwing it with gusto once the official campaign season starts. And without doubt he will rely so much on his bloodline.
On the other hand we heard that the strongest candidate among the challengers of Baste for the mayoralty post is reportedly firming up and refining his platform – something that will take off from what the ruling family will claim as already it has accomplished. And certainly too, the advisers of Ruy Elias Lopez will likely include in his platform something new that the people of Davao expected from the administrations of Duterte the father and Duterte-Carpio the daughter but did not materialize. Yes, the likelihood is that the current and preceding Duterte administrations will claim that there is nothing more for Lopez to promise as all the requirements of development of Davao City are either accomplished or ongoing. So there is nothing more for Lopez to commit to the people of Davao City as major goals of his administration if he wins.
That would then be the current Davao leadership’s biggest mistake and we are definite that the people composing Lopez’s advisory group are scanning every possible nooks and crannies of the present administration for cracks or unseen weaknesses for his platform to take its foundation – one that will give Davaoenos the opportunity to see what is it that the city urgently needs.
We also got it from people close to the Lopezes that at this point in time the former third district congressman is getting in touch with the loyal followers of his late father former Davao City Mayor Elias Baguio Lopez. But many of them are either gone from this world like his father, or have changed loyalty to the present City Hall gods. What with the quota entitlement for the known political leaders to recommend as many as ten or even fifteen people to work as job order workers or project-based employees? Whose loyalty to a long-dead former City Hall honcho will not be shaken with such reward from the City Hall tenant?
Added our source that the young lawyer acknowledges that he is fighting an extremely difficult political battle but he is reported willing to make sacrifices if only to carry the legacy of his late father — a fair, honest and participative governance; one which is not ‘off’ the people, ‘poor’ the people, and ‘buy’ the people.
As for the other two mayoral candidates we only heard of their names until today. Beyond filing their certificates of candidacy, it seems nothing has been talked about or seen of them. They do not even have any address for people who might have the intention to support them to go to. Or that no one person has come out to update the Davao voters what the other two mayoral aspirants are presently doing and what their programs of governance are.
May be the local office of the Commission on Elections will not have any hard time determining who among the candidates for mayor of Davao City are nuisance bets.
***************************
Despite natural calamities happening in Davao City every now and then our place is still very much better situated than Cebu, the Eastern Visayas Provinces and other Luzon areas. Hit a little bit regularly by flash floods, sometimes earthquakes, and disastrous fires, Davao is much better off than those places we earlier mentioned here in this column.
The latest major devastation was brought by the typhoon Odette, which hit a large part of northern Mindanao, Eastern and Western Visayas and parts of Palawan province. The damage wrought by the said typhoon to the affected places appears comparable to that of the atomic bomb attack in Hiroshima, Japan at the closing months of the Second World War. Odette was categorized as near similar to Typhoons Sendong and Pablo that hit the Misamis Provinces and the Eastern Davao region years back.
The typhoon last Thursday and Friday levelled to the grounds almost everything standing on its path. Where it failed to topple down heavily concreted walls of buildings including houses, its strong winds blasted to smithereens glasses of windows and blew off roofing regardless of thickness of the galvanized iron or other roofing materials.
Our ancestral house in Cordova, and all the houses of our sisters and nephews as well as that of our brother all collapsed to the ground either by the direct force of the Odette wind or after getting hit by falling trees.
Yes, the scene in Cebu that was hit by the typhoon’s wrath is reminiscent of the picture of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan depicted in World War II history books.
Indeed we are still much lucky here in Davao City. But with the continuous destruction of the environment, for how long will we be this safe?
