Ex-Mayors Betrayed by Former Subordinates

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

A lady mayor, who lost in the last election, bawled. This after she learned from one of her loyal department heads that twenty days before the succeeding mayor would assume office in July 1, her man Friday, together with majority of the department heads, went to the house of the new mayor.

Man Friday, to those who loved to skip their English Class just to emulate their Sabado Night means an efficient and devoted aide or employee: a right-hand man (Merriam Webster).

The loyal department chief whispered to the losing chief executive that the guy ingratiated with the new mayor by exposing the anomalies of the latter liked how he (the conspiring man Friday) and the exiting mayor padded government procurement, imposed cut or S.O.P from contractors and suppliers on the prices of their services, and their other shenanigans in bilking the public coffer.

The exiting chief executive confronted him at her house and told him that of all the betrayals done to her by some of the department heads, his treachery broke her heart most.

“Tinuring kitang pamilya ko. Lahat ng sekreto ko di ko tinago sa iyo pero ito pa ang ginawa mo sa akin,” she told him in between sobs.

Sus, this was reality of life nowadays. Your fiduciary lieutenant now will be your whistle blower tomorrow. This son of a gun had to dump you for his self-preservation without looking how you boosted his stocks then.

Even the ex-mayor other heads of offices, whose reverence they showed then to all and sundry, had deserted her after the polls were finally counted because she was already lame duck.

***

The same phenomenon in Dagupan City. My source said that several department heads who paid unflinching obeisance to then mayor Belen T. Fernandez in her six years’ stint had been denigrating her not only to people closed with Mayor Brian Lim but to some friends who bumped into them in events graced by the local government unit. One of them told my source that former mayor Fernandez had attitude problem like berating or humiliating them in some of their meetings.

Whether the accusation was true or false, that was the reality when leadership change and these people had their necks to protect. They would drop their former patron like a hot potato and ass licked with the power-that-be.

***

Looked what a then exiting mayor of a first class town in Pangasinan told some media men. 
After the new mayor won the election, he (the exiting mayor) met his department heads and told them for delicadeza sake and respect for him as the still sitting mayor they should not attend whatever meeting the new hizzoner asked them.

“I am still your mayor from May 13 to June 30. After that you can deal with him!” he sternly told them.

But ten days after the May 13 poll, a waiter of a restaurant in the town frantically called him on his phone and told them that the department heads except one were at the restaurant offering plaudits, pressing flesh, and singing hallelujah to the new mayor who treated them with sumptuous foods and unlimited booze to the male chiefs there.

He said each of the heads were motivated to go there because the moneyed incoming chief executive dangled ten thousand pesos for each of them.

In the following day, the outgoing mayor called a meeting at his office and chided them.

“Mga traidor kayo! Hindi na ninyo ako ginalang hindi ninyo na inisip ang mga tulong ko na personal sa inyo!” he furiously told them about what they had done on that previous meeting, a holiday.

 He even told them that for the fifteen years his family ran the local government there many of them financially benefited because of him and his family’s generosity.

“You cannot trust people nowadays,” he told us.

Even his protégée who was catapulted to win the 2017 village election in the poblacion with three million pesos he (mayor) spent from his personal fund to vote buy so he can become a town councilor by being elected as the president of the Liga ng mga Barangay (League of Villages) had deserted him by joining the pro administration councilors at the Sangguniang Bayan.

Liga President was just practical; the new mayor could have launched a coup’ d’état by asking those village chiefs to vote again for the new league president prejudicing his P85,000 monthly remunerations.

I even heard the Liga President initiated himself the meeting with the mayor by asking quid pro quo that he be allowed to retain his being a councilor till the next election in 2022 while he joined the pro administration four councilors to make them five.

That’s a 5-5 equation in a ten members Sangguniang Bayan and a student of political science will tell you that the new mayor now has an upper hand in the Sangguniang Bayan to pass his pet ordinances because the vice mayor, the tie-breaker in every voting, is allied with the mayor.
That further broke the heart of the former mayor who could have still dictate through his former six opposition majority councilor to dissent with the power- that- be and undermines him.

Going back with the man Friday and the P3 million worth village chief, I 
remembered what Army Captain Elisabeth Campbell (actress Leslie Stefanson), a West Point alumnae, told her father Lieutenant General Joseph Campbell (actor James Cromwell) in the mystery crime flick’s General’s Daughter (a movie that is an inspiration or a copycat of the local ABS CBN television series, Dios Mio, General’s Daughter starred by Actress Angel Locsin).

It ran with the following poser and answer: “What’s worse than rape daddy? It’s betrayal!

It happened during the FTX or Field Training Exercise, just like at the PMA when I worked there, when during a night time war game Elisabeth’s upper class those graduating male cadets we called “firstie” tied her hands and feet while they laid her back on the ground naked. They raped and mauled her. 
One of them even inflicted her with venereal disease just like that woman who filed recently a case to Mayor Milbert Oliveros of Cavinti town in Laguna.

The United States Armed Forces did not want to embarrass the leadership of the United States Military Academy asked a compromise, just like the man Friday I mentioned above, to then Major General Campbell to persuade Elisabeth not to file criminal charges to the malefactors in exchange, susmariosep, with another star rank for him.

Now I empathized with those ex mayors, betrayal was worse than rape, tee-hee!

READ MY OTHER ARTICLE:

How Mayor, Guv, Solon Steal to Fund Their Election

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)