Early rigodon, personality-based candidacies noted

DAVAO CITY – Police officer Cesar Mancao is gunning for a congressional seat in Compostela Valley, and in nearby Davao del Norte, former Miss Universe, Margarita Moran-Floirendo gave up the gubernatorial plans to give way to the incumbent and uncle of her husband.

Here, Speaker Prospero Nograles officially filed his mayoralty candidacy in tandem with former Mayor Benjamin de Guzman, incidentally the then vice mayor of last termer, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

But Nograles and Duterte, whose bitter political bickering became a public flavour immediately after the 2007 elections, would have no chance to square it off in next year’s Presidential and local elections. Duterte slid down to the vice mayoral post to square it off with De Guzman, who lost to Duterte in the mayoral contest in the 2001 elections.

The rigodon is noted in many places, with last term politicians also fielding their children and spouses in apparent effort to cling on to the sweet political pie.

Floirendo’s sacrifice on her political plan in favour of Gov. Rodolfo del Rosario defused the tension between the Floirendos and the Del Rosarios, whose bitter showdown in the 2007 elections led to a break in their joint business relations covering real estate, plantation crop exports, transportation and consultancy.

The two families were interlinked through marriage, and the former Miss Universe found herself in the powerful Floirendo family when she married the scion. But she proved more than an international beauty icon; she figured prominently in tourism, philantrophy and environmentatl crusade and showed her fine mettle at handling and managing organizations.

In conceding to the incumbent governor, Moran-Floirendo did not shut down her political dream entirely, stressing that in her prepared speech read over the weekend.

Mancao, on the other hand, went straight with filing his Congressional candidacy for the province’s first district, banking on the benefit of the national spotlight accorded him in the controversial Dacer-Corbito murder case that was dragging the name of former President Joseph Estrada and Senator Panfilo Lacson.

Estrada is running for the same post that he was forced to abandon at the strength of a national outrage over corruption charges, including the murder case that Mancao was extradited from the US to be the government’s state witness. Lacson himself cooled down on what many in the political circles suspected was his perceived Presidential plans next year.

The bitter political rift between the Dutertes and the Nograleses would be Davao City’s major and interesting political showdown with Speaker Nograles to square it off with the mayor’s daughter, Vice Mayor Sara Duterte, who was frequently allowed to handle the affairs of the mayor’s office in the many times that the older Duterte filed leaves of absences for either politically obvious reason to train and groom her for the post, and medical treatment of his aching back and gall bladder stone operation.

Nograles’s son, Atty. Karlo, who ran but failed for the partylist Kalahi in the 2007 elections, is currently lodged for the first district congressional post, to slug it out with the consistent top vote-earner, Councilor Mabel Acosta. Duterte’s name is squarely embedded in Acosta’s candidacy, a move that many Duterte followers hoped would carry her through the campaign.

Training and grooming family members for posts vacated by political figures have also been typically Philippine political tradition. Former Compostela Valley Gov. Jose Caballero has already a daughter in the Provincial Board, Maricar Apsay, and who would try to snatch the gubernatorial position.

In 2007, Sec. Silvestre Bello III has already a son in the Davao City Council, and Councilor Leonardo Avila III has sent his son to a City Council bid, also banking on an environmental platform that his father has consistently carried the advocacy through his nine-year stint. Fellow Councilor Peter Laviña has okayed the Council bid of his wife, Evelyn, who has figured in business management affairs in the city’s business chamber.

Elsewhere the same political circus were already showing as the filing of candidacy closed on December 1.

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