MAMBULAOAWATCH: Tres Panganiban – a personality cult?

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ

AN Open Letter recently published in MWBuzz and addressed to Mambulao Sangguniang-Bayan (SB) candidate Tres Panganiban has drawn curious attention from Mambulao Facebook habitués.

Young and aggressive in their imagination, coupled with the built-in idealism of youth who were recent mass-output from the academic factory mill, they reacted strongly against a call from the letter writer for neophyte Panganiban, a new member of the Mambulao Liberal Party, to withdraw from the SB race and cut his ties from the political party.

The Open Letter has reasoned out that Panganiban, young and inexperience as he is, would be a big waste as a future politician if at this early he gets tarnished by the nasty perception now plaguing Mambulao LP – that the politicians crawling under its roof are not to be trusted as public servants and those who are running in the May local elections should not be allowed to hold any office in the municipal government.

Simplified, the Open Letter says something like this: Birds of the same feather flock together.

Since the veteran LP politicians running for the SB office in this coming local election are perceived to be unworthy of an elected public office for one reason or the other, of which many Mambulaoans are well aware of, Panganiban could, one of these days, be lumped with them with simple ease.

And once Panganiban begins wearing the Liberal Party jacket as he conducts his campaign, the hot-steel branding of the LP will for long remain stamped across his forehead.

And this is a brand that the public would immediately drop, like a mistrusted, offensive, spoiled product.

But of course, the Facebook postings by a number of youth have clearly shown that they did not quite understand the dire consequence when they publicly urged Panganiban to ignore such a quit-call by the letter writer and instead, move on with his life and launch his campaign to become the youngest SB member of Mambulao.

In fact, they promised to help him sell his candidacy once the campaign season took off.

It looks like that the Open Letter of this concerned Mambulao citizen has backfired and the good intention defeated.

The call for Panganiban to quit the race and save himself from the purgatory if not the scorching hell has not only fallen on deaf ears but also inspired a delirious mood to push his candidacy.

This is quite understandable.

The youth would always go for someone who they believe wears their skin and idealism, such as Panganiban.

But in this critical part of the community’s state of affair where the panorama of progress is looming in the horizon, their idealism may be misplaced.

They are simply standing for Panganiban as his sponsors to either make him a corrupt official or a dishonest one owing to the kind of company he would deal with inside the Mambulao LP should he win.

It has been said that those who are 40 years and above long for progress to come to Mambulao, and therefore would vote for the person who could help bring this to the fore with honor.

While those below 40s – otherwise known as the youth -- don’t care about progress and development as they are more psyched on personality regardless of what he would become later resulting from his dealings with people of questionable integrity.

In their bid to elect Panganiban to the SB, the Mambulao youth are definitely pushing him to nowhere but harm’s way.

Sa gasgas na pananalita … sila na rin mismo ang magbubulid kay Panganiban sa bangin ng kapahamakan.

And this has been the concern that greatly worries the Open Letter writer, himself a native of Mambulao, who has seen how politics has mired his community in deep stagnation over the past 60 years.

It’s just too early for the young Tres Panganiban to tarnish his honor; too early for him to put his name in a paragraph of a news report where the word “corrupt” or “magnanakaw” also appears.

If I were him, I’d rather take heed for the sake of his family’s time-honored name.

It’s one great sacrifice to make.

For feedback, email the writer: ahernandez@thenational.com.pg and alfredophernandez@y7mail.com