MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
That’s how the twin senators in their look-alike outfits tailored for the rugged life of the campaign will package the work. An active, dynamic partnership. Counseling, consulting each other. Council of 2, cabinet, bureaucracy.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson, presidential candidate, and Senate President Tito Sotto, candidate for vp, will share 50-50 the work of leading the government, banking on half a century of public service between themselves. In the meantime, Ping has saved us ₱300 billion by not ever claiming the pork barrel due him as a legislator all these years.
A law enforcer before he became a legislator, Ping keeps a 32” waistline, almost as if to remind cops present, past, and future, that when he was PNP chief no cop could do justice to his uniform if he exceeded a size 34 belt. Now, doing the rounds of their townhall meetings all over the islands has trimmed his weight by 2 lb. In Senator Sotto’s case, his Helen worries about those unending trips by air, sea and land. I wonder how many of his voters can guess the color of his eyes. They’re light green with a tinge of aquamarine, sometimes gray, “depending on the light and the color of my shirt.”
But where Ping prefers “block voting” – president and vp elected together – his running mate is for keeping the present system, let the voters choose their bets.
I had a nice time chatting with the two guests at Samahang Plaridel’s Kapihan sa Manila Hotel, and if our exchange sounded too casual, I apologize to my colleagues. It was a chance for us three to do some catching up after years of social distancing (even before the pandemic) and professional etiquette. I have known Ping since he was a lieutenant in Metrocom, and as he’s the forever hero of a good friend whom he rescued from kidnappers, I know his mettle.
Tito Sen, an Eat Bulaga alumnus whose entry into politics was via Quezon City as vice mayor, summed up the Lacson-Sotto duo as “the most qualified, most competent, most experienced” to lead the nation, “from legislative to executive,” and damn those “mind-conditioning” surveys (as he puts it).
Just between friends, Ping wouldn’t say whom he’ll appoint to head DOF and BIR.