Political squabble takes a back seat

“Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.”

—Winston Churchill

 

By Alex P. Vidal

WE are glad no earthshaking political wrangling in the city and province of Iloilo took place these past months and weeks; and it appears year 2024 will bid farewell in a peaceful atmosphere for local politics.

With barely five months before the May 12, 2025 Philippine general election, the political heat is expected to heighten when the Yuletide season is gone.

Ilonggos may expect to hear some ear-piercing political fireworks when the biggest cultural and religious event, the 2025 Dinagyang Festival, will conclude in the fourth week of January.

Politicians angling for different local and national positions may be preserving their energy for the biggest dog fight to come beginning in the first quarter of 2025.

The “bombing-spree” among arch rivals in the local positions is expected to blast off in the social and mainstream media, especially when the microphones of “blocktimers” (paid radio political programs) will start to go full throttle in the airwaves.

In politics, “there will always be storm after the calmness.”  

 

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We have misgivings in the ongoing tumult whipped up by the proponents of “signature campaign” for the absolute clemency of Mary Jane Veloso launched in Baclaran, Paranaque on Dec. 23, 2024, or days after she arrived from Indonesia where she was meted the death penalty for drug trafficking in 2015.

Proponents of the signature campaign should have waited for the right time and refrain from putting pressure on Malacanang since most Filipinos believe President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will eventually grant the absolute clemency.

No need to rush. No need to pressure the government actually.

They should be glad that Veloso is already in the Philippines and already safe from the firing squad in Indonesia.

Veloso had been sent home by the Indonesian government which granted a Philippine petition to allow Veloso to come home on the condition that she would serve a life sentence after years of negotiations.

Life sentence is the maximum penalty under the Philippine judicial system, because capital punishment has been abolished. The signatures will be sent directly to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. even as Veloso's lawyers are pursuing a case against her recruiters for human trafficking

 

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(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)