Local political pot is starting to boil

With the political kettle starting to heat up, the most interesting question is: who are vying for governor of Cebu Province? The word is out that former Cebu Governor Emilio "Lito" Osmeña is seeking to reclaim his position that he bagged in 1988 to 1992. Lito O is the founder and chairman of the Progressive Movement for the Devolution of Initiatives (Promdi). But Lito has been out of office for 23years now and somehow, his political party, Promdi has not gotten Cebu on track for their main objective of getting rid of "Imperial Manila." In fact under the Aquino regime, things have gotten worse on the autonomy front where instead of decentralizing we are more centralized than ever before.

But then out of the blue, Lito transferred his voting residence and then last week, he met Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte who is supposedly running for President under a Federalist advocacy. Since Lito also believes in federalism, he suddenly gave his backing and support to Mayor Duterte, whom we wrote last Friday really did not have a detailed plan on how to turn the ship of state that is the highly-centralized system of governance into a federal system of government.

Then the steam from the coffee pots in our coffeehouses are brewing tales that former governor Gwendolyn F. Garcia, Cebu's first lady governor might also throw her hat into the fight for the governorship. Right now, she is the congresswoman for the fourth district of Cebu and she brings into this fight her three-terms as governor of Cebu, from the year 2004-2013.

Under her watch, Cebuanos, especially from the farflung areas of Cebu Province experience a sense of pride, history and culture, which they never had before. Tourism was no longer focused on Metro Cebu or the traditional dive sites like Moalboal, every town had a tourism potential and growth if only they worked and promoted these by themselves.

But for as long as I have not heard that she is running for governor, I will only make a comment on Rep. Garcia if and when she throws her hat into the ring. Finally , there is the issue of current Cebu Governor Hilario Davide III. What can I say about Gov. Jun Davide? I believe that he is an honest man, but his three years as governor of Cebu has not made any mark for us Cebuanos to be proud of having a Davide as Cebu Governor.

We know too well that under the Aquino regime, Cebu got zero in infrastructure development. Yet the Davides (remember the former Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Sr. is our UN Representative in New York) are very close to Pres. PNoy, but somehow, they could not make a pitch for Cebu to the President to give some infrastructure projects for Cebu in the president's name. For sure, anyone in Cebu who will be running as a member of the Liberal Party will certainly have hard time in the 2016 elections.

At this point, many politicians are already positioning themselves to be behind a strong presidential candidate who most likely would be the next president in 2016. The problem in this country is that we are no longer ruled by the usual rules of the political party where the best of the best belonging to a political party would be the standard bearer for the 2016 polls. What is happening in this country is people are relying only on the Social Weather Station or Pulse Asia surveys in choosing the next president.

I have written in this corner so many times before that these pollsters, SWS and Pulse Asia have been manipulating the surveys to favor certain candidates whom they want to be the next president. I have always maintained that surveys prior to elections do not help improve our democracy. These surveys can be and have been manipulated by unscrupulous politicians in order to make it look like they are leading in the polls, and since the majority of Filipinos are very gullible, they would vote for the leading candidates. If we had a new system of governance, I would like to suggest that a law ought to be enacted to disallow any surveys and its publication.

Meanwhile, there are so many variables in this coming election. First of all, it is imperative that the Commission on Elections return to manual voting simply because even the Supreme Court has finally seen the light that Smartmatic's partnership with the Comelec did not give us Filipinos clean and honest elections. We have written numerous articles that no Comelec officer was ever thrown to jail for cheating for their political masters during the elections from the year 1986 to the present.

After the PCOS issue is resolve, only then can we come up and analyze whether a three-way race would ensue in the 2016 polls for Cebu governor, as there are many variables.

For instance, did Lito Osmeña get the permission of his brother Mayor Sonny Osmeña? Will only know when Sonny O says something about this. As for Gwen, we can only wait until she throws her hat into the governorship ring. As for Gov. Jun Davide, he better make up now while there is still material time to put his mark in Cebu.