Once more! Cebuanos are not cheaters!

Election season has finally begun in Cebu when former Pres. Joseph “Erap” Estrada made his first political sortie to meet with the potential opposition candidates. Earlier, last Monday the “Kugi Uswag Sugbo (KUSUG) political party of former Mayor Alvin Garcia chose him once more to lead the charge to wrest the City of Cebu from the hands of the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) the political party of Mayor Tomas Osmeña that has been in power in Cebu City since 1987. The former Mayor Garcia was once the Mayoralty bet of BO-PK until he had a falling out with Mayor Osmeña and in fact ran against the latter and lost twice.

But this time around, if (am saying if because he hasn’t yet filed his candidacy) former Mayor Garcia is really running for Mayor of Cebu City, he will be running not against his former nemesis Mayor Osmeña (who can no longer run again because of term limits) but incumbent Vice-Mayor Michael Rama, the “chosen one” of Mayor Osmeña. This is expected to be a Battle Royale of sorts… that’s if Mike Rama is also the final candidate!

But back to Erap, when he met with the splintered oppositionists, he gave a speech saying, “When FPJ ran in the 2004 elections, he was cheated here in Cebu because he did not have local candidates. All the Lakas-Kampi candidates, they cheated for GMA.” Shades of Hello Garci? Yes, even my friend, Sen. Loren Legarda once said that we Cebuanos cheated to the point that allowed Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) to win the hotly contested 2004 Presidential elections. But let me make myself very clear… that we Cebuanos did not cheat in the 2004 elections and if you read the recent statement from Erap, the answer is all there!

For those who maybe having a bout of Alzheimer’s, let me point out once more that all the local candidates for the Province and the component cities of Metro Cebu had Pres. Arroyo as their Presidential candidate. I do not recall of any political party carrying any other Presidential bet and that included those who were incumbent candidates and their challengers. So please pray and tell me why did anyone need to cheat for Pres. Arroyo?

If there was any cheating, it could have happened in Garci territory, but certainly there was no such cheating that happened in Cebu. Long before the elections, it was a given here in Cebu that GMA would win in Cebu hands down! We just didn’t know that the Cebuano vote would be crucial to her elections. Because the Cebuano vote was so crucial, the losers in that election started pointing their dirty fingers that we cheated! But no sir, we did not because we didn’t have to cheat for GMA!

While I wrote this five years ago, allow me to repeat what I wrote why Erap and his pal Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ) where not that popular in Cebu as compared to places like Mindanao… that is because both of them were movie idols in Action Movies. My family has been operating Movie Theaters since my grandfather Don Jose Avila bought the Oriente Theater from an American (during the Silent Films) and in the ’60s, all Tagalog Movies were shown in Tagalog Houses.

It was only in the mid-70’s that English house or theaters accepted showing FPJ films. But then, the Cebuano moviegoer was more into Drama films than Action Movies. If you don’t believe me, just ask my good friend Mother Lily (she started her movies with our theaters with a hit tear-jerker movie All Mine to Give) or Vic Del Rosario. This is why Sharon Cuneta, Vilma Santos and Christopher de Leon (whom I met in Cebu City with Movie idol Ricky Davao during the American Chamber July 4th celebration) were very popular in the box-office in Cebu. This is the truth and nothing but the truth as the box-office numbers does not lie!

So there’s a lesson for the opposition, especially the Presidentiables to learn from their 2004 debacle… that they must have a complete slate of local candidates to field against the incumbent candidates. After all, we take it from US Congressman Tip O’ Neal who once quipped, “All Politics is Local!”

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I’m sure that others will call this karma, but it was the first time we saw the photo of Legacy owner Celso de los Angeles featured in the front page of The Philippine STAR being examined by the Philippine National Police (PNP)’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) at the St. Lukes Medical Center. Now whether or not he really has a throat cancer, the PNP has to double check his medical status. So perhaps Mr. de los Angeles would fare better if he admitted to the truth why his Legacy Scam failed so he can become another “Madoff” and I’m sure that those irate depositors might just have pity on him and pray for his recovery.

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