Yesterday’s Interactive Forum with Media Leaders held at the Social Hall of Cebu City Hall was long on exposition and short on real substantive answers from Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama, who to his credit, was his usual entertaining self.
But to anyone who’s been covering the mayor for years, this is what they would normally expect. I first had some semblance of interaction with the mayor during an informal exchange held at the Cebu Daily News building in 2010, a few months before winning his first term as mayor of Cebu City.
Monitoring him on the radio and TV and attending two media fora — one, after winning his second term in 2013 and an Interactive Forum with Media Leaders either that same year or 2014 — I do get the sense of how he, as a politician, works the crowd and it’s no easy feat.
Discussing what he spoke about during that forum would have to wait at another time though — maybe after the elections or even days before, who knows — but I hope to get around to it soon.
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The news story about a locally produced comics portraying Liberal Party (LP) standard-bearer Mar Roxas as an action man/hero trying to get calamity victims out of harm’s way was both amusing and somewhat icky.
To be fair though, this political gimmick had been in circulation since the Marcos regime days when the late president and his first lady Imelda were portrayed as “Malakas at Maganda,” the Filipino mythological equivalent of Adam and Eve in locally produced comics distributed during his more than 20-year rule.
Though the backers and support staff of Roxas may have been careful not to resort to such exaggeration, the publication of the comics showing the former Interior and Local Government secretary as an action man clashes with the strong and still prevalent public perception of him, unfair and inaccurate though it may be, as being incompetent due to his handling of the victims of the Supertyphoon Yolanda devastation.
I also found somewhat off-putting Roxas’s tendency to reference that line in the film “Batman Begins” in which the hero says, “It’s not who I am underneath but what I do that defines me.” He quotes that line and applies it to himself, saying that people should not be quick and harsh to judge him.
But unlike Roxas, Batman, a fictional character, spoke that line in reference to his caped vigilante adventures, not a run for public office. Oh well, Roxas has made his bed and now he has to sleep in it.
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To his credit, Barangay Tinago chairman and City Council candidate Joel Garganera opted to be somewhat modest and chose to publish a newsletter detailing his achievements, albeit with the caveat that he is the so-called “Panday” that fixed his barangay’s problems.
In his campaign posters, Garganera plays it up as the “Panday”, complete with glowing sword and striking a fierce pose against a character that looks somewhat suspiciously similar to Kylo Ren of “Star Wars: the Force Awakens.”
Isn’t Panday’s enemy supposed to be Lizardo? Whether Cebu City residents find Garganera’s Panday gimmick entertaining and convincing enough for them to vote him into office will have to be seen on Election Day, May 9.