Puerto recall exclamation point of severed poll ties

ARTWORK of a political partnership torn apart by the desire for power. Lucilo Bayron is at left. Edward Hagedorn at right.
ARTWORK BY ERNIE SAMBO

PUERTO PRINCESA CITY—Edward Hagedorn must have invented the Rolodex. When there was no phone book to store your contact numbers, he can tick off from memory the names of 20 people he just met over a banquet table like he’s reading from index cards.

Lucilo Bayron was Hagedorn’s in-law and trusted ally when they both plunged into Puerto Princesa politics. He was the vice mayor, self branded as the “action man” behind Hagedorn’s vision and rhetoric.

Twenty years ago, no one would have predicted the two will become the bitterest of protagonists in today’s recall elections.

“There is no more reconciling these two and the most we could hope for is an honest and fair elections,” Fr. Robert Reyes told the Inquirer.

Reyes, the so-called running priest, and Palawan Bishop Pedro Arigo have mounted a campaign to keep the recall elections credible, amid allegations by both sides of foul tactics, including vote buying and media attacks.

At least 43 others had joined the fray as mayoral candidates but the real story is not about anyone of them offering an alternative choice to the two main actors, as it was immediately clear they were part of a scheme still to unfold on election day.

“We are just nuisance,” said 53-year-old Mayette Ferrer nervously after deciding to withdraw her candidacy on Monday.

She claimed she was promised P2,500 and was paid P500 by a suspected supporter of Bayron to fill up a candidacy form at the Commission on Elections (Comelec) office with an assurance they won’t get into trouble.

The names of 43 candidates have been included in the ballots even as more than half of them withdrew three days before the elections, as Comelec didn’t have the time to print an updated ballot.

A two-week campaign period ended Wednesday, with both sides separately mounting color-coded rallies to drum up voter support, Hagedorn was represented by red and Bayron yellow.

“Why must we have recall elections?” complained Elmer Badilla, an employee of the city government working at the city’s main tourist draw, the Underground River.

It was a sentiment that summarized the frustration of the incumbent Bayron, whose temper he let go by storming the Comelec venue during the crucial period of validating the signatures of recall petitioners, when he publicly tore a resolution freshly issued by the poll body on a procedural matter related to the exercise.

Hagedorn supporters had mounted the recall petition early into the fresh term of Bayron, complaining about rising criminality in the city and declining tourism activity among others, an allegation that Bayron described as preposterous while trying to block the recall elections all the way to the Supreme Court, to no avail.