“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
—Winston Churchill
By Alex P. Vidal
I WAS probably right all along when I wrote months ago that Iloilo City Mayor Geronimo “Jerry” Treñas may have committed one of the biggest blunders in his political saga when he decided to treat Iloilo Capitol factotum and historian Nereo Cajilig Lujan as “enemy.”
This came after the impatient Treñas, 67, identified Lujan, 54, as one of the most vocal critics of City Hall’s demolition of an art deco façade at the Iloilo City Central Market built in 1938, an event that sparked uprisings and protests from heritage conservationists.
One thing led to another and Treñas eventually filed cyber-libel case against Lujan, a long-time journalist and former House of Representatives compeer.
More determined than frightened, Lujan hit back by filing a case against the city mayor in the Office of the Ombudsman for unlawful destruction of the art Deco façade in “violation” of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) fiat.
Treñas insisted Lujan’s criticism may have been uncalled for being a fellow government worker. Lujan, however, argued he was within his rights as a taxpayer and historian to boot to express his sentiments on the subject matter imminently loaded with public interest.
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I was actually stunned by the way Treñas reacted to Lujan’s juggernaut. Normally, a public official of the city mayor’s stature would have shrugged off Lujan’s criticism instead of turning it into conflagration.
Being pissed off is part of the game; being “inconvenienced” is healthy because it can only mean one thing: you’re effective and doing your job as public servant. By listening to criticism without losing control of your emotion is a primary hallmark of good leaders.
Criticism from the press and political adversaries have been part and parcel of the regular functions of any public official—elected and appointed.
No imperfect public official has been yanked out from office immediately or censured by higher authorities based on criticism from the press or taxpayers like Lujan, who isn’t politician.
Lujan’s initial barrage of unfavorable comments prior to their major bickering were like trial balloons; they weren’t meant to cause harm like latex, metallic and mylar balloons.
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But Treñas treated Lujan’s harmless social media verbiage like Edicts of Ashoka, thus the trial balloons methodically transformed into blimps and zeppelins, dirigibles that are hard to torpedo even by a City Hall radar-guided electromagnetic lasers.
There’s one fundamental caveat that Treñas may have failed to take into consideration: Lujan, a dyed-in-the-wool social democrat (Socdem), is no pushover. Perhaps, the city mayor or his subalterns overlooked the fact it’s risky and dangerous to pick or sustain a firefight with a sharpshooter.
Lujan is no ordinary warrior. Like a pugilist, he packs wallop in both fists: he can write (he is the only Ilonggo writer whose article was published in the Reader’s Digest), analyze, execute a game plan with aplomb, and plot a strategy that will make Carl von Clausewitz and Scipio Africanus melt in their boots. The guy knows how to wiggle out from a protracted battle royale and make his enemies look like ninny doofuses.
Those who follow his adroitly and pedantically written “MY TWO CENTS” and “SOMETHING PERSONAL” daily cannonades in the social media against the Treñas administration’s sins of commission and omission will, perhaps, agree they constitute a lethal strike tantamount to a “death by a thousand cuts” for the subject or subjects of his scathing flurries.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)
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