Ex-Mistress Goads to Run Against Ex-Lover-Mayor

By Mortz C. Ortigoza 

Binmaley Mayor Pete Merrera and Vice Mayor Sam Rosario pent-up anger with each other came into boiling point in the former recent 100 Days Report held at the town’s evacuation center.

Affronted by the remarks of the Hizzoner that some of the projects done during Rosario’s stint as nine years’ mayor like the P11 million overpriced mobile clinic and the comparison of gasoline consumption between their term, the Veem walked out from the Ulat ng Bayan attended by town officials and their constituents.

“Nag walked out ako, sumigaw ako. Sabi ko: “magdemanda ka na lang!” kaysa sasabihin mo pa sa mga tao. Ano ang gusto niyang e proved doon parang may ginawa ako? Hindi ako mag – rereact sasabihin niyang may ginawa?” he said in a radio interview.

In my earlier interview with Merrera – who beat Rosario’s son in the recent mayorship race – he was ambivalent about the sincerity of the VM when I told him they were palsy walsy as they smilingly embraced each other in a photo-op taken by this newspaper reporter Arnel Montemayor.

We even put it as a front page photo in our Northern Watch Newspaper. I thought the cold war between the duo that originated since time immemorial was already repaired.

If the animosity of the top two politikos of the town could no longer be patched up, the casualties of these bickering would be Merrera and the 87,000 residents (2020 Census) of this first class coastal local government unit who has a present P360 million budget.

Without the support of the Veem and his almost all ally- lawmakers (called councilors) in the Sangguniang Bayan the programs and projects of Merrera will go to naught.

Imagine a town contents itself with a reenacted budget because the Dads and the Veem maneuvered not to pass a new budget with a twenty percent development fund where tens of millions of pesos of new projects are sourced out?

Making hostage the budget made me remember in 2021 and in early 2022 at Dagupan City when majority of the councilors allied with former Mayor Belen T. Fernandez procrastinated to approve the P1.38 billion budget of the second class city.

Because of that schism, the infrastructure projects of then Mayor Brian Lim early this year were prejudiced.

When Fernandez beat reelectionist Lim, the former faces a hostile Sangguniang Panlungsod (legislature) controlled by the allies of Lim who are gung-ho for retribution what the present dispensation had done to their patron.

Schism with the opposition controlled legislative body haunts Fernandez until her term ends in June 30, 2025. Poetic justice for Lim, eh?

The casualties in the power play between Merrera and Rosario and even Fernandez and the Dagupan City’ SP are their constituents who will be deprived of those projects, like school buildings, that will be stalled.

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First class town Mayor was a beneficiary of the political and financial goodwill of Big Time Politico - 1 (BTP-1).

Several months before the filing of candidacy for the May 9, 2022 election, BTP-1 and another BTP-2 from the district where the mayor lives had allegedly a quid pro quo. The mayor should forego his reelection so the kin of BTP-2 could run unopposed to get mayorship’s diadem.

The mayor opposed the entreaty of this patron and instead sought and won his reelection by beating the kin of BTP-2 in a pyrrhic victory that applied to the two mayoral antagonists – where hundreds of millions of pesos were spent for a post that gives only, susmariosep, more than a hundred pesos a month salary.

Several months after the election, BTP-2 and the kin – a former political nemesis and who lost the mayorship election – had a parley in his house.

The parley?

Both will support the mayorship candidacy of the former mistress of the sitting mayor who (the former concubine) continued to be the beneficiaries of BTP-2’s good will.

The Hizzoner – who has various mistresses – is now allied with the new governor who used to be his former patron’s BTF-1’s pet peeved.

“Kalaban mo noong mga ilang taon, ngayon magkakampi na kayo,” I quipped about the unpredictability of alliances among Filipino politicians when I heard from an informant the changing political landscape of this burgeoning town.

(Send comments to totomortz@yahoo.com)