The Morales dynasty

THE post-Marino Morales era in Mabalacat politics has dawned with the results of the barangay elections.
The new day shines bright. But not for the putative successors to the record-holding already-four-term-and-still-mayor Boking.
Eat your heart out, Cris Garbo. Gnash your teeth, Pros Lagman. Wail, wail some more, Anthony Dee. To the rest, go on dreaming.
Whatever expected exit of Boking from the local political scene will not provide an easy entry, moreso an easier takeover of the seat of mayoralty for any of the three, and the rest of the other dreamers.
Exit a Morales, maybe. But enter yet another Morales, most surely.
Atlas, son of Boking, has served that screaming notice to all the salivating pretenders to the mayoralty post with his victory in Barangay Dau, the biggest barangay in terms of number of voters in Central Luzon, and, arguably, in the whole Philippines.
No patsies did Atlas rout in the hotly-contested barangay post.
There was the still-whimpering-I-wuz-robbed Marcos Castro, Jr., once all-around factotum to Gov. Mark Lapid, who banked on the vaunted Lapid magic, and was reportedly backed by the Lapid’s massive war chest funded from you-know-what.
There was the now-eerily-quite once-incumbent Louie Cunanan whose bruited about, and proven, invincibility in elections past was purportedly endowed by as much as his broad-based mass support as his bonds with presidential son and congressman Mikey Macapagal Arroyo. No Mykey magic too?
No mean feat did Atlas truly achieve in Dau.
Hurl now the sourgrapes at the victor: “It was Boking who did it for Atlas.”
Of course, it was Boking. It was Boking’s sins too that were heaped upon his son to drag him down.
So, the transition of a Morales to a Morales – in the future yet – follows the dynastic rites of passage: “The king is dead. Long live the king.”
The Morales dynasty just birthed: Atlas is heir to the throne. Half-brother Migs, the just-elected Dau chair of the sangguniang kabataan, takes second in the line of succession. Very neat? But as dynasties go, there may just sprout some usurpers to the throne. In the Mabalacat case, not only the “outsiders” like Garbo, Lagman, Dee or even Tars Halili can well do an Oliver Cromwell to a King Charles I and wrest power.
The line of succession can be altered by a coup, so to speak, from within. Among Boking’s many children, the primus inter pares in the field of politics is a prima – his daughter Marjorie who served as SK Mabalacat chair herself for as long as anyone in the town can remember.
Married to former Sto. Tomas councilor and still-very-much-politically involved John Sambo, Marjorie may well have a much bigger political stock than any of her siblings.
And history is rife with the tales of sibling rivalries as the bane of dynasties.
In the meantime though, easy still rests the crown on the head of King Boking. One more term! Long live!