The vice mayor’s gambit

On the assumption that there will still be midterm elections in May 2019, when we vote for local government officials, we shall have started seeing this month the various moves of politicians aimed at trying to secure victory in the coming polls. And, if we focus our attention on the ongoing actions and continuing pronouncements of politicians here in Cebu City, we can discern that they may be well-versed in Sun Tzu’s Art of War as applied to real politics. In military warfare as it is in electoral contests, it is winning that matters. So, we shall discern that there are teachings of Sun Tzu that our homegrown elected officials adhere to faithfully if only to be triumphant in their political endeavors.

Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella has taken the first move by allying himself with a popular president. He has jumped the gun on everyone else by taking his oath of affiliation with PDP-Laban. On its side, the party welcomed Labella because he is the city’s highest elected official seeking its shelter. His strategy is good. I surmise that he already got the assurance of the political party of President Rodrigo Duterte, that he will be the party’s mayoralty candidate in 2019 when he said that he is open to the idea of running for mayor. His statement was consciously subdued but it surely projected strength. It was preceded by the news that he has already been designated as the local chairman of PDP-Laban, and therefore certain to be the party’s standard bearer.

Labella carefully designed his declaration to project the image that if he runs for mayor, he does so because he himself is capable of leading his men in going to war. A good general must be a source of his men’s inspiration, to paraphrase Sun Tzu. Differently said, the vice mayor wants to avoid appearing that he is just “the Malacañang bet” and that, more importantly, he too is his own man. This early, it is not helpful for someone seeking the mandate of the people to show that he is a lackey of the powers-that-be, and Labella is aware of that.

Another factor in this Labella gambit is timeliness. Fight a timely war, opined Sun Tzu. We recall that Labella became a candidate for city councilor when he was accommodated by Mayor Tomas Osmeña and reached term limits in the BOPK’s ranks. He then ran for vice mayor as the running mate of Michael Rama against Osmeña, his former benefactor, when he knew that Councilor Joy Young was going to be his adversary. He has, thus far, spent many years in public service. Today, he is not young anymore. If he runs again still as Rama’s vice mayor in 2019, the physical strength with which he fought his past political wars may be irreversibly waned in 2022. By then, he will already be in his early seventies. So, he has to run for mayor in 2019. He thinks that his time has come.

To find out if Rama is still obsessed with running for mayor, Labella ostensibly issued that subdued declaration. Feign your moves, Sun Tzu suggested. Actually, in announcing his availability under President Duterte’s banner, he tried to hit two birds with one stone. First, his announcement is applying some kind of pressure on Rama for him to step aside. Conventional wisdom tells us that when a sitting president backs up a candidate for a local position, that protégé enjoys huge logistical support. By making it known he is with the president’s supposed juggernaut, Labella hopes other Team Rama leaders will troop to his side and make Rama realize the futility of running for mayor.

Second, Labella has effectively forced Osmeña to train his sights on him. Henceforth, the camp of the mayor is expected to be vile to the vice mayor in almost everything the latter does. When the mayor gets more acerbic in his language at the vice mayor, those who are perceived opposed to Osmeña will know whom to cast their lot with. Then, there are also sectors in our society who are believed have been on the receiving end of the mayor’s known brand of harsh leadership. I can cite as examples Rico’s Lechon and Vic Enterprises. It shall be expected that they will gravitate towards him who has the balls to lock horns with the mayor, and the Labella announcement is designed to achieve that objective.

Here is hoping that the vice mayor’s tactical play shall prove correct.