Barug-PDP-Laban to become the ruling party?

I didn’t make a big fuss when I visited London a month ago and while taking videos of Buckingham Palace, I didn’t realize that with so many tourists and people there that my wallet had been stolen. I only realized it when I got off the hop-on/hop-off bus in St. Paul’s Cathedral when I realized that my wallet was missing, I got back inside the bus where I was seated in the last row and my fellow passengers tried to help me find my wallet to no avail. I had been ripped off.

Aside from a few hundred dollars, my driver’s license was in my wallet. So when I got back home, my first task was to go to the Land Transportation Office (LTO) to get a duplicate of my license. It was then I realized that I had to go to SM Seaside City’s LTO mega office, and in less than 45 minutes I got my license back. It was then that I realized how things have gotten better with the services in LTO and the best part of all is they have computerized their services and thus, it totally eliminated the need for fixers which, for many decades, were difficult to remove.

This is why tonight we have with us LTO-7 Regional Director Vic Caindec to explain to us how he was able to bring LTO into the modern world. Just to remind our readers, LTO-7 used to hold office in lots owned by Cebu City. When Caindec had an argument with Mayor Tomas Osmeña, it actually forced him to move out of the LTO office. So tonight please watch Director Caindec on SkyCable’s channel 53 at 8 p.m. with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 9 p.m. Monday and at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday.

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The Commission on Elections (Comelec) en banc has affirmed the decision of its First Division disqualifying Cebu City North District Councilor Alvin Arcilla from running for a fresh term in the last midterm elections. In its decision dated May 28, the en banc affirmed the March 19 resolution of the Comelec First Division disqualifying Arcilla. In the same decision, it also resolved and denied his motion for reconsideration. This is the problem with Comelec; it cannot come up with a definitive decision whether or not to allow candidates seeking for a third term to be on the ballot.

If only Councilor Arcilla wasn’t too focused on his getting himself re-elected despite a constitutional ban against candidates running for a third term, he wouldn’t have wasted the time of his constituents who still voted for him regardless of his constitutional deficiency. As the Comelec en banc has already ruled, Arcilla exhausted his three consecutive terms as city councilor and therefore was not eligible to run for another term in the May 13 polls where he ended up securing the sixth spot. This Comelec decision has a future impact on the ruling BOPK party which was supposedly in control of the Cebu City Council.

Three years ago, we saw opposition councilors Nendell Hanz Abella, Dave Tumulak, and Jerry Guardo bolting what was then Team Rama to join BOPK because it was Tommy Osmeña who supposedly won that election despite our efforts to expose the shenanigans of Smartmatic in cahoots with Comelec. Our suspicions weren’t really unfounded because the estranged wife of then Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista accused her husband of graft and the latter has since disappeared. If we tried Bautista, we would have solved the many problems that literally forced Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte to ask Comelec to get rid of Smartmatic.

While the BOPK has the numbers in the Cebu City Council they are actually a body without a head in the sense that Mayor Tomas Osmeña lost his mayoralty bid. So in the end, we expect that the Barug-PDP-Laban group will make its moves on the members of the BOPK. We learned that mayor-elect Edgardo Labella said in an interview that some councilors and barangay officials allied with BOPK have reportedly expressed support for his administration.

We already heard of the moves by Councilor Jerry Guardo who once belonged to the Barug, but moved to the BOPK, so now his chances of getting the things he wants may happen if he again returns to Barug. Last Thursday, Guardo announced that he has accepted Labella’s invitation to join Barug-PDP-Laban. Surely there will be more defections coming!