and savings for what they need.
Every kid of school age will be back at school in a few days and life at every home will be back to normal: stressful, rushed and almost always something is lacking.
The only distraction by the first two months would be the increasing number of campaign noise on social media as candidates try to milk every opportunity to make their names and faces known to the population, by hook or by crook, through truth or lies.
Yet all this noise would be minor compared to what will happen by March 28, when the local candidates begin their campaigns.
Vehicles of every kind, from cargo trucks and Sarao jeeps to tricycles and pedicabs will be going around festooned with streamers and loaded with speakers blasting jingles of every sort.
The assault on the senses will be sustained and merciless, disturbing the siesta of senior citizens long used to sleeping by the time their full stomachs have settled.
In their wake will come bands of roving supporters and their leader, trying for a face-to-face encounter, as if the mere sight of their countenance and a recitation of their claimed accomplishments would serve as a good introduction.
But the people of this island are all aware that local elections are decided by only a few things: the capacity of a politician to provide assistance, however small, whenever their help is sought especially during disasters and personal loss; the ability to show up once in a while in one’s barangay to reassure that their leader is still alive; and, of course, the needed resources for the “oras de peligro” in the last three days before election day.
This, everyone who voted in the eighties and the nineties remember as the political mantra of then Virac Mayor Rodulfo Sarmiento: “mantener, sustener, disponer.”
By this standard, most of the incumbents, except perhaps for the brazenly corrupt or the incredibly stingy, have the advantage over their rivals.
Of course, some of the aspirants are quite well-versed and skilled in using social media, so much so that even their falsehoods are accepted by their followers as truth.
But that could work only if these fire-breathing opponents themselves have no skeletons hiding in their own closets.
Then, their injurious perorations will be tested in the “tribuna” where their respective campaign’s speakers’ bureau would roll out counterattacks after counterattacks.
By the time Election Day has come, the people will realize that despite the scores of new blood venturing into the political stage, nothing will change in the way money and good-old “utang na boot” influences their choice of leaders.
Unless, by the grace of the Almighty, most of the electorate miraculously come to their senses and really elect the candidates who they think would govern this island and its 11 towns well.
If not, the only change the people would see three days after May 12, 2025 would be the coins in their pockets after spending their loot for cheap goods, fast food and new cellphones.