Of ponkans, apples and ratiles

BONGBONG MARCOS it was that started it: fruits in the current of events political, that is.
At the Café Mesa in Clark Friday last week for a meet-the-local-press, the son of the Great Ferdinand was breezing through whatever issues thrown his way when the winning chances of his standard bearer in Pampanga was raised, premised on the administration’s purported stranglehold of the local government executives.
“So have you heard of the ponkan story of Senator Villar?” inquired Bongbong. Nobody had any inkling of the story. So everybody wanted to hear it.
“The ponkan fruit starts green but turns orange when ripe and ready for the picking. That’s the whole story.” Bongbong said, his smile that of the tangerine Cheshire cat that just devoured the yellow canary. The metaphor of colors and creatures there mine, and intended for some conclusive effect.
So was Bongbong saying there are Pampanga mayors who may be, at this early, already playing footsie, if not sleeping, with the enemy?
More than feelers, Bongbong said, had been sent by an undetermined number to Villar. But of course, they could not as yet be named.
“In due time, they will come out,” Bongbong promised.
Okay now, who might Bongbong be referring to?
Lime yellow is the color of City of San Fernando Mayor Oscar S. Rodriguez, being committed to Senator Aquino.
Angeles City Mayor Blueboy Nepomuceno already sports Villar orange.
It cannot be Mabalacat Mayor Boking Morales, being all shades of green and his daughter already entrenched in the Villar camp, courtesy of her husband’s dogged rabidity to the Bondoc camp, the bastion of the Nacionalista Party in Pampanga.
No way for Candaba’s Jerry Pelayo, having the distinction as the first Pampanga mayor to endorse Gibo Teodoro soon as his name was whispered as presidential material. Besides, what’s his name Gulapa has long enslaved himself to the Bondoc cause to spite Pelayo.
I am not telling but I know at least two Pampanga mayors who have had some up close and personal relationships with Villar. I am not also saying that they are among those Bongbong implied.
Time will tell if the mayors’ green today will turn orange before election day.
Saturday last week, the ponkan story was raised by Ashley Manabat at the breakfast table of 3rd District Rep. Dong Gonzales, the Lakas-CMD-Kampi campaign chair for Central Luzon.
“It’s the apple, not the ponkan that is the favorite not only in Pampanga but in the whole of Region 3, specifically, the green apple that is ripe, ready and refreshingly succulent in its greenness. Unlike the ponkan, no matter how orange in color, the green apple has no taste of any sourness.” So went Cong Dong’s own take of the fruity story.
Ironic though that the fruits served by Cong Dong’s kitchen cabinet were yellow bananas and la mallorca – that is yellow not red – watermelons.
Still, neither colors nor fruits mattered to the omnivore Macky Pangan of Central Luzon Daily who kept on munching whatever was served, gastronomically or intellectually.
It was the PR maven Jun Sula of Sun-Star Pampanga that gave us some indigestion, in them political sense.
“Forget ponkan and apples. It is the lowly ratiles that best embodies political shading. The fruit starts green, turns yellow, then orange, and finally red in its full ripeness,” the man called Zoolander declared.
Red? I never suspected Jun S. as blood donor to the Red Cross, not even as a Subic volunteer.