GENERAL SANTOS CITY, Philippines – A coin toss to break a tie during the election of the chair of the Association of Barangay Captains here on Wednesday strengthened the hold of the Pacquiao family on politics.
Sarangani Rep. Manny Pacquiao’s younger brother and chair of the Apopong village, Rogelio, was sworn in as ABC head and will be sitting at the city council as regular member.
ABC chairs are known to wield some influence over their fellow village officials and are often close to mayors and other powerful people in local politics.
When the election to determine who would head the city’s 26 chairs, Rogelio got the same votes as Lourdes Casabuena of Barangay City Heights.
This prompted officials of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Commission of Elections (Comelec) to resort to a coin toss.
But Casabuena said she had been a victim of a “Judas Iscariote” or the proverbial turncoat.
She said the party she was affiliated with – the Achievers with Integrity Movement of the Antonio family – had won 14 of the 26 barangay chairmanships.
Given this figure, Casabuena said, she would have emerged the winner of the election for ABC chair as Rogelio would only have gotten 12.
“All of the 14 barangay captains made a commitment to toss me up. But, unfortunately, one of them reneged on his promise,” a visibly upset Casabuena said.
Casabuena said she suspected that the turncoat was tempted by money.
“My colleagues received text messages asking them to dump me in exchange for P200,000 cash,” she said.
The Pacquiao camp has not commented on this claim.