“You betrayed me when you told me to sleep soundly.”
This was San Juan Mayor Guia Gomez’s stinging rebuke to her estranged political allies—House minority leader Rep. Ronaldo Zamora and his son, San Juan Vice Mayor Francis Zamora—in a letter she read during a flag ceremony on Monday.
At the same time, she berated the pair for being ungrateful despite the help she had extended to them over the years.
Addressing the vice mayor, an emotional Gomez recalled the time she helped his father campaign against Janna Ejercito—her son Sen. JV Ejercito’s cousin—when the elder Zamora was running for a seat in Congress.
“The people of San Juan know the hardships I went through despite my old age just to have your father win the election. I had to stay up late, endure the sun’s heat, breathe smoke and dust, and go to every corner of San Juan. And this is how you repay me?” she said.
In that election, Janna lost to Ronaldo Zamora.
The 73-year-old Gomez also recounted that she gave the younger Zamora duties not usually delegated to a vice mayor to prepare him for his mayoral run in 2019 after he promised her that “I would be able to sleep soundly.”
Gomez told her audience at City Hall that Francis Zamora once told her that whatever happens, he would not give her any problems. He would also let her complete her three terms in office, she added as she noted: “Is this what ‘whatever happens’ means?”
In contrast, Manila Mayor Joseph “Erap” Estrada seemed cool to the fact that the Zamoras, his family’s longtime political ally in San Juan City, were considering running against Gomez.
In a lighting ceremony in Manila on Friday, he commented: “There’s nothing wrong with having ambition,” when reporters asked him for a reaction. Senator JV Ejercito is Estrada’s son with Gomez.
“It’s a democracy; anybody can run. Why stop somebody from running? It’s a free country,” Estrada added.
Gomez’s statements on Monday stemmed from Francis Zamora’s declaration last week that he was considering running against her for mayor next year. According to him, the decision came after the Ejercito-Estrada camp “unceremoniously dumped” him and his father following a June 12 meeting with the city’s barangay (village) chairs in Camp Crame.
The vice mayor earlier said that while the Ejercito-Estrada clan has yet to make any announcement, talk was rife that Gomez would seek reelection, and that Sen. Jinggoy Estrada’s daughter, Councilor Janella Estrada, would run as vice mayor, while his wife Precy would seek the city’s lone House seat.
Gomez, however, belied his claims, saying that Janella, a first-term councilor, had said that she would run for reelection while Precy has not expressed any “interest in joining politics.”
She added that her visit to Camp Crame was purely to mend ties between Sen. Jinggoy Estrada and her son whose “relationship has been strained because of our defense for you and your father.”
Gomez, however, didn’t deny the presence of the barangay chairs during her visit but added that they came hours ahead of her. She also confirmed that Jinggoy, who once served as San Juan mayor and continued to wield a lot of influence in the the city, had endorsed her to the barangay chairs “because your plans to run against me has already reached him inside the four corners of his detention cell.”
However, she maintained that Jinggoy “didn’t mention any candidate for vice mayor or congressman.”
She pointed out that in view of their long years of friendship, the least the Zamoras could have done was to “talk to me to ask if there was any truth to it.”
“But you didn’t bother taking the time to talk to me because you already made the decision to dump me. You’re only using these issues to cover up the betrayal you did,” Gomez said, adding, “What did I ever do to you to deserve this?”
In a phone interview with the Inquirer on Monday, Zamora said that his decision to go against Gomez was not for his own sake but more of “what the people wanted.” He added that the people were starting to “look at possible avenues for change.”
Asked if they would reach out to the Ejercito-Estrada camp given that Gomez had said that she was open to patching up things with them, Francis Zamora replied: “I’ve been humiliated. It’s not something you enjoy.”