Spare the city
Instead of getting public sympathy it seemed that the issue raised by the Genuine Opposition (GO) through its local organizers that they incurred security threat reason why they canceled their grand rally at the provincial capitol grounds Wednesday last week boomeranged on them.
Provincial Administrator Manuel Mejorada, who first broke the issue, could not blame the public for doubting such declaration. First, they did not report to the police the so-called threat. Second, they could not show evidence of the purported text messages warning that the GO rally would be sabotaged.
Actually, everybody was surprised when news came out around 7 p.m. Wednesday that the GO campaign sortie at the provincial capitol grounds got canceled due to security threats. No such information came out earlier that afternoon when the stage was set and the posters of candidates were hanged all over the rally venue.
Mejorada's claim that weeks before the supposed rally they already received information that it will be sabotaged is also incredible. How could it be when it was not even confirmed until a few days before the rally that there was such an activity.
It also did not help that Mejorada attributed the supposed sabotage plan to Justice Sec. Raul Gonzalez and his group. Linking the GO campaign sortie to the infamous January 17 assault of the provincial capitol is highly irreconcilable. Although, it was evident that the GO senatorial candidates used as rallying point in their media statements the Capitol incident.
Nevertheless, the biggest impact the issue created was on the city's overall image. That is why we cannot blame Mayor Jerry Treñas to be deeply hurt by the controversy. As what Treñas has said it is disheartening for the city's image to be damaged by mere political gimmickry.
Indeed, politics is a dirty game. But politicians should not go down the level of inventing stories disrupting social order just to gain public mileage.