FOR starting on the wrong foot, the much-ballyhooed House bid of presidential son Dato Macapagal-Arroyo appears headed for a vertiginous tailspin, not necessarily that he would lose the balloting but more so of the controversies that would hound him in the campaign.

        Citing incomplete compliance of residency requirement to make him an eligible congressional candidate in the first district of Camarines Sur, a group of Bicolano lawyers are preparing a legal hurdle to prevent him from representing a district where he has no roots to speak of.

        But while he is being pictured as an adopted son of Libmanan, the vote-rich town of the province’s first district, a legal precedent over the issues of residence and domicile snares the presidential son’s candidacy in the face.

        Because his house in Libmanan was built late last year, a legal mind declares that the law requires that Dato should have at least completed a one-year residency requirement.

        Of course, there’s always another side to the argument as a battery of brilliant and well-fed Malacacang lawyers must have already been feeling comfortable with their prepared rebuttal when the question arises.

        Non-lawyers that we are, we might as well leave that kink to those whom Shakespeare wanted killed. A character in one of the bard’s classic works blames lawyers for the crisis and betrayals that befall their little kingdom such that in order to regain relative peace, they must first kill all the lawyers.

        Dato’s having a blue-blooded Batangueño (though he has resided in Calabanga for a long time, took a Bicolana for a wife and earned his fortune here) for a campaign manager is another error that only highlights his being a non-Bicolano. And as if that was not enough, the latest we heard was that Dato’s camp has designated a half-Batangueño half Bicolano for a spokesman in the person of a retired judge who may be articulate on legal matters but lacks the youthful energy that his job requires.

        The public perception would be that he does not trust Bicolanos for the sensitive jobs, which nonetheless require them to be in close touch with the ordinary Bicolano voters. To the ultra sensitive Bicolano, having non-Bicolanos in the frontline will only thicken the wall of mistrust and heighten the brewing animosity obtaining since former Congressman and now Budget Secretary Nonoy Andaya has been accused of selling out his congressional district to an interloper. Of course, Andaya and Rep. Luis Villafuerte are on his side and these two smart people would want nothing less but to see him win the race at all cost for their own selfish political convenience. And perhaps to Dato, that’s what matters the most at the moment.




Elmer and Michael

        WE take our hats off to Misters Elmer Abad and Michael Padua for belonging to a rare breed of young men who have their hearts in the right place. Despite the tempting offer for them to join a formidable slate, nay an unbeatable one, as city councilors in the Naga City mayoral race, the two politely declined, saying that politics is not their cup of tea. With such gesture amidst the deafening political noise and chaos where every Tom, Dick and Harry are scrambling to join the political fray, both Elmer and Michael expressively delivered a strong political message to remind us that love of country and service to fellowmen are not the monopoly of politicians.