Joshua Alim, a modern day Julius Caesar

“Cowards die many times before their actual deaths.”
--Julius Caesar

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- “I have crossed the Rubicon…it’s congressman for 2019. Ilonggos, I will fight for you.”
Thus was the Caesarean declaration made by Councilor Joshua Alim in his Facebook account on October 8, 2018.
By using Rubicon, a shallow river in northeastern Italy south of Ravenna, as the focal point of his battle cry, Alim has imitated Julius Caesar’s crossing of the stream in 49 B.C. which was tantamount to a declaration of war against Rome as represented by Pompey and the Senate.
The historic importance of this event gave rise to the phrase "crossing the Rubicon" for a step which definitely commits a person to a given course of action.
Now that Alim, a lawyer and law instructor, has “crossed” the river, he must decisively defeat Pompey to complete the heroic saga.
Alim will tangle against his former colleagues in the city council, Dr. Perla Zulueta and Julienne “Jam-Jam” Baronda, in the shootout for Iloilo City’s lone congressional district in May 2019.
Two “Pompeys” backed by two powerhouse establishments: the Treñas Cavalry and the Joe III Squadron.
Alim’s incursion is buttressed by the combined Gonzalez and Ynion Armada.

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The real Caesar and real Pompey fought to the bitter end at Pharsalus on August 9, 48 B.C.
Pompey had 48,000 infantry, 7,000 horses; Caesar had 22,000 and 1,000.
“Some few of the noblest Romans,” says Plutarch, “standing as spectators outside the battle…could not but reflect to what a pass private ambition had brought the Empire…The whole flower and strength of the same city, meeting here in collision with itself, offered plain proof how blind and mad a thing human nature is when passion is aroused.”
In Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization, Will Durant narrated: “Near relatives, even brothers, fought in the opposite armies. Caesar bade his men spare all Romans who should surrender; as to the young aristocrat Marcus Brutus, he said, they were to capture him without injuring him, or, if this proved impossible, they were to let him escape.”
The Pompeians were overwhelmed by superior leadership, training, and morale: 15,000 of them were killed or wounded, 20,000 surrendered, the remainder fled.
Pompey tore the insignia of command from his clothing and took flight like the rest.
Cesar tells us that he lost but 200 men--which cast doubt upon all his books.

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Caesar’s army was amused to see the tents of the defeated so elegantly adorned, and their tables laden with the feast that was to celebrate their victory.
Caesar ate Pompey’s supper in Pompey’s tent.
Pompey rode all night to Larissa, thence to the sea, and took ship to Alexandria.
At Mytilene, where his wife joined him, the citizens wished him to stay; he refused courteously, and advised them to submit to the conqueror without fear, for, he said, “Caesar was a man of great goodness and clemency.”
Brutus also escaped to Larissa, but there he dallied and wrote to Caesar.
The victor expressed joy on hearing that he was safe, readily forgave him, and at his request forgave Cassius.

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To the nations of the East, which--controlled by the upper classes--had supported Pompey, he was likewise lenient.
He distributed Pompey’s hoards of grain among the starving population of Greece, and to the Athenians asking pardon he replied with a smile of reproof: “How often will the glory of your ancestors save you from self-destruction?”
When Pompey hoped to resume the battle versus Caesar (with the news army and resources of Egypt, and the forces that Cato, Labienus, and Metellus Scipio were organizing at Utica), he was murdered while his wife looked on in helpless terror from the ship in which they had come, by servants of Pothinus, eunich vizer of Ptolemy XII, as he reached Alexanderia, in expectation of reward from Caesar.
When Caesar arrived, Pothinus’ men presented him with Pompey’s severed head.
Caesar turned away and wept.
By riding on the epic of the “crossing in the Rubicon” which bears a striking semblance of his struggle in Iloilo City politics, will Atty. Joshua Alim weep like Julius Caesar and loudly declare “Veni, vidi, vici. (I came, I saw, I conquered)” after the May 2019 elections?

The ‘Iron Lady’ Zulueta I know

“Win or lose, we go shopping after the election.”
--Imelda Marcos

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- The reported “surprise” entry of Dr. Perla S. Zulueta in Iloilo City’s congressional race must have saddened Councilor Joshua Alim and former councilor Julienne “Jam-Jam” Baronda.
Alim and Baronda are aware they will be facing a serious contender with an almost impeccable record and a long experience in public service.
If there are still active Iloilo beat reporters today who have covered Zulueta starting when she won a seat in the Iloilo provincial board in 1988, I am one of them.
In the period between 1989 until 1992, Zulueta was a runaway newsmaker (from an IBC-TV 12 newscaster before she entered politics) as the No. 1 tormentor of then Iloilo Governor Simplicio “Sim” Griño.
Now Councilor Armand Parcon was Bombo Radyo Iloilo’s capitol beat reporter but fellow Bombo Radyo reporter and then law student Alim (he passed the bar in 1991) and another former Bombo Radyo star reporter Francis Hinayhinay would join us from time to time when we interviewed then Board Member Zulueta, who first earned the moniker “The Iron Lady” because of her series of jaw-dropping expose and Philippic speeches in the provincial board.

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A tense moment occurred sometime in 1992 before Zulueta ran and lost to former Assemblyman and Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) Commissioner Arthur “Art” Defensor Sr. for governor in the May 1992 elections.
We, in the Iloilo Capitol Press Corps, had been tipped off that an “indignant” son of Governor Griño was in the capitol premises “planning to disrupt” the provincial board’s regular session to prevent Zulueta from making another scathing privilege speech that would embarrass the governor.
Everyone waited anxiously and our attention was divided--we leered from time to time inside and outside the session hall like we were watching a ping pong match.
The son indeed appeared but a phalanx of capitol henchmen, alerted by the potential chaos, boxed him out peacefully thus preventing a melee as the late virtuoso and watchful former Oton mayor Lazaro “Nene” Zulueta silently stood nearby like Kevin Costner in the Bodyguard film.
Board Member Zulueta managed to sledgehammer anew the Griño administration in her sharp speech unmolested.

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Griño, a religious and good man, lost to Defensor. Zulueta, who wound up second, garnered more votes than the defrocked governor. Fifth district independent bet, the late Azur Salcedo finished last.
When Zulueta became Iloilo city councilor in 1995, she strapped around her waist the opposition holster anew and became the No. 1 source of Mayor Mansueto “Mansing” Malabor’s headache.
In every cookie jar that minions of Malabor had dipped their fingers into, there the firebrand Councilor Zulueta was running the gauntlet and firing the cylinders.
In every anomaly that she had stumbled upon, Zulueta saw to it that there were Dickens to pay for the thieves and the taxpayers would heave a sigh of relief.
In the 1998 elections, Zulueta sided with then fellow city councilor and now Iloilo City Rep. Geronimo “Jerry” Treñas in a foiled attempt to defeat the reelectionist Malabor, the “man of the masa” who rolled past all his moneyed rivals to complete the three terms as city mayor.
Zulueta became Treñas’ ally when the latter reigned as city mayor from 2001 to 2010.

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It was during those years that Zulueta’s political relationship with fellow city councilor and eventually vice mayor Jose “Joe III” Espinosa III was buttressed (although they had been closely working together in the local legislature in the opposition during the Malabor administration). When Joe III became city mayor in October 2017 after Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog’s “forced departure”, he retained the “Iron Lady” (a Mabilog appointee) as one of his advisers.
Zulueta has reportedly accepted Mayor Joe III’s invitation for her to run for congress in May 2019 after former councilor Nielex “Lex” Tupas said “no mas” to politics.
Her entry will place her in a collision course versus Baronda, who is being backed by Treñas; and Alim, who is reportedly being supported by the group of Dr. Pacita Gonzalez.