Cagayan de Oro Mayor Oscar Moreno — CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY —— The desire to see public service regarded again as a noble profession is what drove Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Oscar Moreno to choose to support Vice President Leni Robredo for president in the 2022 elections, even over a party mate.
“Public service is a public trust. The need to bring public service on the table is very important,” Moreno told a gathering here of Mindanao leaders of the volunteer corps for Robredo’s campaign.
Moreno is the first mayor in Mindanao, and the second throughout the country after Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas, to declare support for Robredo’s presidential bid.
Moreno is completing a third term in office and is running for governor of Misamis Oriental next year.
He lamented that the current divisive political culture is not a good model for future generations to emulate.
“We have been polarized for far too long already. The youth will only learn how damaging politics is; how dirty politics is. I don’t know if they will be able to learn the nobility of public service,” said Moreno, one of the prosecutors in the impeachment trial of President Joseph Estrada.
He added that the call for public service is pressing as the country navigates through the economic crisis spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We need leadership that is objective. A leadership whose agenda is service to the people. Leni is the one who can truly unify the country,” Moreno said.
Moreno disclosed that he was inclined to support Manila Mayor Isko Moreno Domagoso “but there were developments that I felt that he was not really his own candidate.”
“I felt that somebody else had somehow made him run,” he noted.
According to Moreno, Sen. Manny Pacquiao, who retired from professional boxing to run for president, is a model of personal success based on hard work.
“But this is governance. This is the future of our country that is at stake. While he is a good man, what we need is a president,” explained Moreno, a local stalwart of the ruling PDP-Laban but joined Pacquiao in running under the PROMDI party.
On former Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Moreno concedes that the current leader in pre-poll surveys “has plenty of money (and) has the solid north.”
“But what does he bring to the country that you and I love? What does he bring to the only country we have? What? You tell me. What lessons have we learned from him? You tell me, what?” Moreno asked.