Attorney Attlee
ABUGADU ing kailangan ning tersera distritu.
In blazing red letters, streamers strung at just about every strategic corner in the City of San Fernando screamed for a lawyer-representative in Congress.
No, the city and the rest of the third district electorate did not get tired of their doctor in the House. The cong-doctor just opted to bang his head against the formidable, certified world-class City Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez.
The electorate, okay, the streamers, by coming up with a definitive choice, implied that the current crop of wannabes come real short of the people’s expectations for competent representation in the sphere of legislation.
Acclaimed frontrunner Board Member Dong Gonzales is an engineer. Ditto also-runner Dinan Piñon Labung. Sta. Ana Mayor Doy Gaddi is a doctor. Cong Ely ‘Tiger’ Lagman, unbeatable as San Fernando vice-mayor, is…a businessman? Sorry, but for his nocturnal habits I don’t know much about the man. “Tiger, tiger burning bright, in the forest of the night.” Indeed!
There’s just got to be a lawyer candidate. So Attorney Attlee Viray was simply shoved into the fray? In fairness to the guy, he is by no means a push-over.
His very name reeks of greatness – I supposed taken from Clement Richard Attlee, successor and predecessor to the great Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill as prime minister of the United Kingdom. Attlee succeeded Churchill in 1945 and then was in turn succeeded by him in 1951. Yeah, they also played musical chairs in UK politics.
One of the better, nay, outstanding lawyers in the province, Attlee – along with Oca, Secretary Ed Pamintuan of SCAD, Jesse Caguiat, among others – was at the vanguard of MAYAP, the Movement for the Advancement of Young Advocates of Pampanga that stood up against the Marcos dictatorship championing the cause of human rights.
True to form and character, Attlee it was too that defended us in the Angeles Sun -- Elmer Cato, Ody Fabian and Sonny Lopez – against the harassment of libel instigated by then Angeles City Mayor Antonio Abad Santos.
Aside from being a very good lawyer, Attlee writes well too – having published a book and as columnist of Sun Star Pampanga.
That he’s a real homo bono for the tersera distritu is indubitable. Now, if only elections were decided purely on capabilities vis-à-vis needs.
Suddenly I remembered the 1987 congressional polls in the first district. Colleague Ram Mercado propagandizing Bar topnotcher Lolong Timbol came up with the blurb: “King kalesa, kutseru; karing muwebles, karpinteru; king Kongresu, abugadu.”
Lolong and another lawyer, Arlene Buan, lost to Tarzan Lazatin, alumnus of the Universidad de Madrid, in ceramic engineering.
Again in the first district, in 1998, lawyer and sitting Angeles City Mayor Ed Pamintuan lost to his vice, the golfing Blue Boy Nepomuceno.
In 2004 in the fourth district the candidates were characterized as “an attorney-general, an aging actor, a wily ‘contactor’ and a clueless doctor.” It was the doctor that won.
Take heart, ye attorneys out there: It is not all losses for lawyers in congressional contests in Pampanga. Oca served four terms; Zeny Cruz-Ducut had three. Early on there was Juanita Lumanlan-Nepomuceno who also sat as governor.
So bilog pa rin ang bola. Cong Dong may be a probability as of now. But Cong Attlee is not a far-fetched possibility. Doy, Dinan and the Tiger too.
To all of them: Good luck.
In blazing red letters, streamers strung at just about every strategic corner in the City of San Fernando screamed for a lawyer-representative in Congress.
No, the city and the rest of the third district electorate did not get tired of their doctor in the House. The cong-doctor just opted to bang his head against the formidable, certified world-class City Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez.
The electorate, okay, the streamers, by coming up with a definitive choice, implied that the current crop of wannabes come real short of the people’s expectations for competent representation in the sphere of legislation.
Acclaimed frontrunner Board Member Dong Gonzales is an engineer. Ditto also-runner Dinan Piñon Labung. Sta. Ana Mayor Doy Gaddi is a doctor. Cong Ely ‘Tiger’ Lagman, unbeatable as San Fernando vice-mayor, is…a businessman? Sorry, but for his nocturnal habits I don’t know much about the man. “Tiger, tiger burning bright, in the forest of the night.” Indeed!
There’s just got to be a lawyer candidate. So Attorney Attlee Viray was simply shoved into the fray? In fairness to the guy, he is by no means a push-over.
His very name reeks of greatness – I supposed taken from Clement Richard Attlee, successor and predecessor to the great Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill as prime minister of the United Kingdom. Attlee succeeded Churchill in 1945 and then was in turn succeeded by him in 1951. Yeah, they also played musical chairs in UK politics.
One of the better, nay, outstanding lawyers in the province, Attlee – along with Oca, Secretary Ed Pamintuan of SCAD, Jesse Caguiat, among others – was at the vanguard of MAYAP, the Movement for the Advancement of Young Advocates of Pampanga that stood up against the Marcos dictatorship championing the cause of human rights.
True to form and character, Attlee it was too that defended us in the Angeles Sun -- Elmer Cato, Ody Fabian and Sonny Lopez – against the harassment of libel instigated by then Angeles City Mayor Antonio Abad Santos.
Aside from being a very good lawyer, Attlee writes well too – having published a book and as columnist of Sun Star Pampanga.
That he’s a real homo bono for the tersera distritu is indubitable. Now, if only elections were decided purely on capabilities vis-à-vis needs.
Suddenly I remembered the 1987 congressional polls in the first district. Colleague Ram Mercado propagandizing Bar topnotcher Lolong Timbol came up with the blurb: “King kalesa, kutseru; karing muwebles, karpinteru; king Kongresu, abugadu.”
Lolong and another lawyer, Arlene Buan, lost to Tarzan Lazatin, alumnus of the Universidad de Madrid, in ceramic engineering.
Again in the first district, in 1998, lawyer and sitting Angeles City Mayor Ed Pamintuan lost to his vice, the golfing Blue Boy Nepomuceno.
In 2004 in the fourth district the candidates were characterized as “an attorney-general, an aging actor, a wily ‘contactor’ and a clueless doctor.” It was the doctor that won.
Take heart, ye attorneys out there: It is not all losses for lawyers in congressional contests in Pampanga. Oca served four terms; Zeny Cruz-Ducut had three. Early on there was Juanita Lumanlan-Nepomuceno who also sat as governor.
So bilog pa rin ang bola. Cong Dong may be a probability as of now. But Cong Attlee is not a far-fetched possibility. Doy, Dinan and the Tiger too.
To all of them: Good luck.
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 8:54 AM
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