There was little surprise when Councilor Mary Ann de los Santos confirmed she was joining the Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BO-PK) last week, but the leap was still a dramatic one.
It still caused a jolt to see this strong-willed woman smiling happily at the man who once tormented her as mayor of Cebu city.
Tomas Osmeña, founder of BO-PK, had beat her in the mayoralty race in the 2007 elections and marked her out as formidable foe.
As barangay captain of Lahug for 19 years, no one has the staying power or neighborhood control of Mary Ann de los Santos.
She later ran for Congress but was no match for the BO-PK machine or the well entrenched congressman Raul del Mar. It was only in the 2013 elections that she broke through and won a City Council seat under the Team Rama camp.
She focused her campaign on health care which led her to head the ad hoc committee that would oversee the construction of the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC). This project eventually led to her split from Team Rama.
She questioned the awarding of the project to a Manila-based joint venture that gave the lowest bid but had disturbing discrepancies in its bid papers and false claims about its track record.
Instead of being thanked for her vigilance, she was publicly chastised by Mayor Michael Rama.
Then she was shut out of the committee, as bidding rules were revised. Too independent and not enough of a team player? By December of 2014, the chill was noticeable. Talk of “disloyalty” and conduct unbecoming Team Rama stalwart were already in the air.
The final nail came when she voted on Aug. 5 for the resolution asking Mayor Rama to defer the awarding of the South Road Properties (SRP) lots to developers until after a legal opinion of the Department of Interior and Local Government is resolved. She had gone over to the “dark side”, voting with the BO-PK. For this, she was no longer forgiven. The name-calling and nasty digs about her personhood in radio and other media intensified.
When she finally resigned as minority floor leader, she talked of being “traumatized” not by the political disagreements but the mean-spirited nature of the attacks “on my character”. One would think , after 21 years in politics, her skin was thick enough.
Apparently not. In her privilege speech, she talked of pain from the alienation of Rama and allies who didn’t defend her: “I am deeply hurt, feel betrayed and alone.”
Joining BO-PK is no guarantee that de los Santos has found a group that will not mind if she shows up to be“too independent, not enough of a team player” again.
Her advantage, aside from the solid barangay Lahug following she brings in, is her obvious rapport with BO-PK’s queen Margot Osmeña, and her realization, to borrow Mary Anne’s words “that women can make good politicians.”