Without Annabelle, Mike would have lost

A lot has already been said as to why Tomas Osmeña lost to Mike Rama. Or to put it the other way, why Mike Rama won over Tomas Osmeña. I will add my two cents worth. And I will lead off by saying I was right all along.

Right from the beginning, when it was announced that Mike's cousin Annabelle Rama would be running for the congressional seat in the north district of Cebu City, I immediately wrote that this could be a ploy to win more votes that otherwise Mike would not be getting.

I don't know if, in the thick of the campaign, especially when things got to be very personal between Mike and Tomas, Annabelle began to get serious about her bid for Congress. But serious or not, I stuck to my original theory that Annabelle was the secret weapon of Mike.

I said I did not know if Annabelle was serious or not because, in my layman's estimation, there was no way in hell that Annabelle could win against Raul del Mar. Without meaning to demean anyone, I just think the choice was pretty obvious for the Cebuanos.

In fact, the roughly 120,000 votes that del Mar got as against the roughly 30,000 of Annabelle should say it all. To have only one Cebuano out of every four vote for you is not going to get you anywhere.

Yet, what cannot get Annabelle anywhere can get her cousin Mike to unprecedented heights, to uncharted territory where can walk the very first man to ever hand Tomas his first political defeat.

After the votes were counted, Mike won over Tomas by roughly only 7,000 votes. But if you think that was a real squeaker, Tomas himself has previously escaped by no more than the skin of his teeth against another opponent.

Compared to Tomas's own previous hairline victories, the 7,000 majority of Mike can be considered as wide as a chasm. But the question is, could Mike have won those votes without Annabelle?

Remember that while the 30,000 votes Annabelle got in her failed congressional bid were peanuts compared to the 120,000 of del Mar, they were roughly four times what Mike needed to beat Tomas.

Now, I will not go so far as to say that every person who voted for Annabelle also voted for Mike. They may be cousins, and they may be of the same team. But Mike and Annabelle each had their own individual following, just as they had a following as a team.

That being my premise, I can say with a great deal of certainty that if one person out of every four who voted for Annabelle also voted for Mike, then there is his margin over Tomas. That ratio could not go lower or else Mike would have lost, which he in fact did not.

In other words, the ratio can only go higher, such that it could be two out of four who voted for Annabelle also voted for Mike. Or, to push the envelope further, it could have been three out of four.

Whatever the case, that is how I see it -- a huge chunk of the votes Annabelle generated went to Mike and were exactly the votes that helped him win over Tomas. Without the 30,000 votes of Annabelle, or a fraction thereof, I don't know where Mike would get his 7,000 majority.

That was how I saw it long before the election and that is how I still see it. The real mission of Annabelle was to generate votes that can also go to Mike. Had she won against del Mar, a possibility only very few entertained, that would have been just a bonus.