Not a single presidential candidate can lay claim over Cebu, which has the largest number of electorate at 2.7 million. Four panelists in the INQUIRER Town Hall: Voices of the Visayas forum on Friday agreed that no political party could proclaim dominance over the island, making it difficult to predict who would win for president in Cebu this May.
“It is anybody’s game,” Mayor John Henry Osmeña of Toledo City told the audience composed of students and teachers inside the Center for Teacher Excellence at the Cebu Normal University along Osmeña Boulevard here.
Joining the mayor in the forum entitled “Whose ‘country’ is Cebu?” were his cousin, former Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña, Cebu Rep. Joseph Ace Durano and Raymond Aquino.
The Cebu forum, which was conducted in partnership with the Coalition for Better Education, was the second leg of the INQUIRER Town Hall: Voice of the Visayas. The first was in Iloilo City last Thursday.
The INQUIRER Town Hall was part of the INQUIRER Group’s preparations for the Visayas-leg of the presidential debate at the University of the Philippines Cebu tomorrow.
“Nobody owns Cebu because behavior of political clans in Cebu and the local parties no longer follow the pattern that we have been accustomed to,” John Osmeña said.
“Cebu has layered constituencies. It has geographic divisions and nobody can claim they own Cebu,” he added. John said that among the seven districts in Cebu, only one has remained “monolithic” in the last 20 years – the 5th district dominated by the Durano family for decades. Still, he added he was surprised the Duranos and their local party, Barug Alang sa Kauswagan ug Demokrasya (Bakud) went for presidential candidate Grace Poe when Poe’s rival, Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is a cousin. Tomas Osmeña agreed.
“Cebu is not Binay country, neither is it Garcia country or Osmeña country. It is nobody’s country,” he said. But Tomas said he was rooting for Liberal Party standard-bearer Mar Roxas because of what he had done for Cebu. Durano, Poe’s campaign manager, said the bigger question should be to whom should the Cebuanos lend their support this coming election.
“My guess is as good as yours,” he added. Durano cited a survey that showed 27 percent may still change their minds on whom to vote in the May 9 polls.
Aquino, a Duterte volunteer, said while it may be presumptuous for candidates to claim Cebu as their bailiwick, his personal opinion was “Cebu is Duterte country.
His opinion, he said, was based on answers he got when he made an impromptu survey among Cebuanos. He said 7 out of 10 people he asked –mostly drivers and vendors – told him they are for Duterte.
John said he expected the winning margin in Cebu would only be at least 35 percent or about 700,000 votes.
But Aquino is optimistic his candidate will get 1.5 million votes.
Durano said they planned to hit 10 percent more of the current base, which he declined to reveal.
He admitted that Cebu was a “very big challenge” for the Poe campaign since Duterte has a natural advantage because he traces his roots to Cebu, specially Danao City, the Durano hometown. Duterte’s father was a former mayor of Danao before he and his family migrated to Mindanao, he said.
Durano said Roxas is also strong in Cebu since he won here when he ran for senator and vice president.
“That’s the challenge we are facing,” he added.
But Durano said he has faith in his candidate whom he says is the only political candidate who could forge political unity, which the country needs to accelerate economic growth. Tomas, however, disagreed, saying achieving political unity was unrealistic.
“In democracy, there is no unity,” he added. “There is a clash of opinions because that is the essence of democracy.”
“If you want unity, we have dictatorship. Or monarchy. Or one church. Is that what you want?” he asked.
John, however, had an appeal to whoever would become president: they should come back to Cebu.
“I have been through several presidents. What is important they pay attention to us,” said John, also a former senator.
He recalled that when Benigno Simeon Aquino III ran for president in 2010, he spent P1 million to organize a rally for the LP standard-bearer. “We had a huge rally.
At the end of the rally, he went down the stage with Mar Roxas and did not even say thank you. That’s the last time I saw him,” said John.
He stressed that presidential candidates should not just be paying lip service. “They should give us the time, money and attention that we need,” he added.