As I move around the province now to conduct consultations with the people before the start of the official campaign period, I am overjoyed but humbled by the warm reception given by the people in the remote areas of the different municipalities.
Yesterday, I toured five villages of the town of Pigcawayan, the last town of North Cotabato going to the boundary of Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao, huge crowds gathered and waited for hours just “to take a close look at Manny Pinol.”
Not a few elderly women shed tears as they hugged me making me feel like I was their long lost son who had finally come home.
In Barangay Panatan, a village which stands at the border of Maguindanao province, I was deeply touched when the matriarch of the Bieren family, Maura Bieren and mother of former barangay chairman Melinda Bieren Burcege, asked me to let her touch my face.
“Come let me touch your face. You do not realize how much I prayed for you and how lonely I was when you lost in the last elections,” the 86-year-old Bieren matriarch told me.
Then tears rolled down her face.
Later, she told my staff, Engr. Mila Casis: “I can write his name 100 times in the ballot.”
In another village, New Kulasi, another elderly woman shooed her daughter away who was trying to tell her to eat first before listening to my lengthy message.
“Go away, I am not hungry. I want to listen to Pinol,” she told her daughter.
Honestly, I am mesmerized myself at this display of love and affection by the people in the remote areas of the province.
But while this surge of people’s support for a candidate who lacks the resources and does not have the money to run a decent campaign, makes me feel good, I know that it is also a burden that I have to carry.
With the poor and ordinary people hitching their dreams and aspirations on me as their leader, I have to live up to their expectations.
I cannot betray them or fail them. This is a difficult task but it is a burden that I have to carry to show the people that I truly care for them and I feel their pain and anguish and understand their dreams and yearnings as a people.
The load is heavy but my people’s love and affection will help ease the burden. I will try my best to live up to their expectations.
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