Twilight time

ABAC NA. It’s already daytime. The cry of victory of Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan in elections past.

SISILIM NA. It’s twilight time. The jolt of reality to Mabalacat City Mayor Marino “Boking” Morales in the barangay polls just past.

Forever – six consecutive terms – all of 18 years – broken only by suspension, and still eyeing more to come with the cityhood  – now shows some cracking, even for the mighty Boking. That is the general perception.

Premier Barangay Dau – without which Mabalacat will most certainly revert to a sitio – Boking’s very bailiwick overwhelmingly denied his son and namesake Marino “Atlas” Morales, Jr. a third and last term as barangay chairman.

And how! Even with the vaunted Iglesia ni Cristo vote, Atlas lost by 1,693 votes to Dr. Oscar Aurelio, former three-term councilor and also-ran in the provincial board derby last May.

No mistaking there, some pundit post-mortemized: The junior’s miserable defeat is a repudiation of the senior. As much for the former’s perceived incompetence as for the latter’s overstaying power.

And witticized: “Not so much for what Boking stands for as for what he is overstaying for.”

 Yeah, so much “for” that there could only be an “anti” to it all. Sorry, could not resist it.   

Indeed, claimed the Sitio Panday Pira resident philosopher – at no other time has Barangay Dau seen so many inaugurated projects, regaled with the mayor’s presence, and inundated with cash than in the campaign for the barangay elections.

Unidirectional, he hastened to add, given Doc Aurelio’s “unexplained poverty” and publicly acknowledged parsimony.        

Still, Morales lost.

So, it’s the end of the dynasty Boking is a-building?

As one swallow does not a summer make, so one loss does not a dynasty end. And there’s Boking daughter Marjorie Morales-Sambo – MMS for her campaign moniker – winning the village chair of Duquit, tasting victory at last in her third try for an elective post.

One Morales out, another Morales in. And the cycle continues?

More than Boking’s other children – city councilor Dwight and SK head Migz – it is MMS that is seen to hasten not only twilight but midnight for the House of Boking.  

Remember, MMS is the prodigal daughter that not only ran against, but utterly dishonoured, her father in the hustings in 2010: publicly washing – without  rinsing, our wag said – the family dirty linen, throwing everything and everything filthy at her father, the kitchen sink, the toilet bowl, and the septic tank included.

Aye, how the tablet of the Fourth Commandment was blasted and grounded to dust in that election campaign.

Emotive rather than intelligent – not to mention very religious – voters that we are, it was the abused, accursed, and aggrieved father that was reposited with the ballots of sympathy that buried the pretensions of the daughter.

Buried, but not in oblivion. As proved in the 2013 local elections, with the loss of MMS for the vice mayoralty post. Notwithstanding her having kissed and made up with her father.        

It is interesting to note too that the 2013 mayoralty race was too close for comfort to Boking, having won by “only” over 2,000 votes against a perceived palooka who had a namesake as rival to confuse the voters, and with the solid INC vote that is said to number well over 5,000 in the city.

MMS’s election weakened, rather than strengthened or even just positively affirmed, the solidity of the House of Boking. With the stamp of prodigality impacted in her, MMS is already being viewed as some sort of a woodworm gnawing at the foundations that shall ultimately result to that house’s collapse.

On the other hand, those unconvinced that the 2010’s daughter-versus-father confrontation was not a moro-moro got their positive affirmation in MMS’s recent victory. Yeah, yet another instance of the Morales monopoly of city politics. Yet another fodder for the fire of animosity being whipped up in the web against the family.               

Whichever, not too good for Boking.

So it’s twilight time then?

Yes, the Morales fandom says, the vampirish Breaking Dawn in their mind, with all its sense of eternity.

Yes, our pundit says, thinking more of the House of Boking breaking down, with all feelings of enmity. 

Me?

I’d rather leave it to Jun Magbalot and Deng Pangilinan, BM Cris Garbo and Vice Mayor Christian Halili.