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When former senator John Henry “Sonny” Osmeña announced his interest in running for mayor in Cebu City, not a few saw this as a way to spite cousin Mayor Tomas Osmeña whom he accused along with former Cebu governor Lito Osmeña and Councilor Hilario Davide III of making inroads in Cebu province behind his back.
He said the bottomline was about turf.
He said he had “respected” Mayor Osmeña and never “interfered in his territory” of Cebu City but now he gets displaced by Councilor Davide's rumored plan to run for Cebu governor.
One may dismiss these reasons as the rants of a retired politican whose weight in the local landscape has diminished since 2007 after he lost a reelection bid following his voting to withhold disclosure of the infamous second envelope in Erap’s impeachment trial .
Or perhaps, with the recent revival of the Partido Panaghiusa in his hands, Sonny O wants to prove something more.
His grinning face in the photo op with Sen. Loren Legarda and other luminaries in the Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC) suggests why he doesn’t want to be counted out as a political force in Cebu and has weight to throw around when election warchests have to be apportioned to deliver votes for candidates.
Sonny’s tirade recalls his break with younger brother Lito, who was then Cebu governor in 1998 and whose star began shining in the national stage. That war was fueled by a slighted sibling’s anger over an incursion of turf.
Parochial, family-centric politics still rules in the Philippines, a deepset reality.
Look at Cebu, where a single clan has produced a president, vice president, two senators and city mayors.
Another family on the rise,the Garcias, have produced two governors, a deputy speaker, and two congressmen, along with ambitions to capture the vice presidency in 2013.
Just this week, Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero walked out of the Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC), with critical remarks against “the billionaire (Sen. Manuel Villar?), the landed elite ( Danding Cojuangco?)” and so on, even if he happened to be the son of a longstanding Marcos ally and a congresssman to boot.
Party machinery, often tied to wealthy elites and politically influential clans, will largely determine what candidates will run for office.
Even the leading candidate for the presidency, Sen. Noynoy Aquino, owes much to influential parents from landed, old political clans in Luzon.
A democracy based on merit, programs of governance and genuine change may still be a long way off in this country.
