Tradpol versus People MAVERICK RODY DUTERTE CONQUERS WEST VISAYAS

By Manny Piñol

Have you ever been punched in the midsection, also known as the solar plexus?

I’ve been through that in many of my childhood brawls with my brothers.

It’s a sickening feeling. You would not know whether to sit down or rush to the loo to unload.

I guess that’s how the bigwigs of the administration Liberal Party in the Ilonggo-speaking Western Visayas region are feeling right now.

They would be most likely slouched in their seats now feeling like they have been walloped with a Pacquiao left in the midsection.

Who wouldn’t feel that way?

Traditional politicians who have dominated the provinces in the islands of Negros, Panay and Guimaras previously proudly declared that Western Visayas is the Kingdom of Manuel Roxas III.

“Mar (Roxas) will win in Panay by 55%,” a veteran politician I talked to in Iloilo told me last week.

The secret to the projected overwhelming victory by Roxas in the Ilonggo-speaking region, he said, would be the vaunted LP machinery and the massive funding which would be poured.

Indeed, last week while I was touring the provinces of Panay Island with my brother, Ferdinand, Roxas bagman identified as Tawe Bediones had already started distributing “funds” to barangay chairmen and mayors – P5,000 to the barangay chiefs and P50,000 to the mayors.

Added to that is the towering presence of Franklin Drilon, the Senate President who undeniably has implemented gargantuan infrastructure projects using the infamous PDAF and DAP.

When I was in Panay, however, I felt like something dramatic would happen in the so-called “Roxas Kingdom.”

There were signs. In Roxas City, for example, a mock elections held in a local college had presidential frontrunner Rody Duterte edging Roxas by about 3%.

In another school in Antique Province, a more shocking turn-out was reported. Out of 100 respondents, Duterte got 99 votes and Roxas 1.

I also heard grumblings among mayors who reportedly complained that the P50,000 given to them was supposed to have been P300,000.

In Iloilo City, some political and civic leaders were saying that should Duterte courageously talk about drugs and the operation of three notorious drug lords who are perceived to be friendly to some local politicians, the masses might just decide to defy the traditional politicians and go for the man with the Manos de Piedra.

Yesterday, the first signs that the Roxas Kingdom was crumbling were seen in Bacolod City where most of the political leaders are either for Roxas or for Grace Poe Llamanzares.

Wildly cheered by a crowd which observers said was comparable in size and magnitude to the multitude which attended the Davao Rally last month, Duterte shocked the LP hierarchy.

Today in Iloilo City, in spite of the harassment by local political leaders, Ilonggos came in full force to the Duterte rally, forming one of the biggest crowds seen in a political rally in recent memory.

They came on their own, not unlike the barangay chairmen who received P5,000.

It is too early to say, a veteran journalist told me by long distance phone tonight, but there are indications that the Ilonggo masses would deliver not just a sickening wallop to the midsection of the LP leaders but a thunderous haymaker which would result in the total knockout of traditional politics in this region where elections are mostly won with the use of money.

This is a classic match-up between the tradpols and the people and this early it looks like the nation is going to witness a dramatic upset.

(Photos show the huge crowd in Bacolod City April 19 and the big crowd in Iloilo city at early evening today. Photos courtesy of CineMotion Digital Films.)