“Identity politics preaches a splintering of one large, collaborative group into competing vindictive ones – resulting in new, angry tribes whose central thesis is to not cooperate.” –Greg Gutfeld

It is not healthy for city hall or any local government unit to begin its administration by running after employees or department heads who did not support the current administration in the prior elections. It’s a waste of time and resources; it’s anticlimactic and smacks of vindictiveness—it’s what is happening in Iloilo City today.
It is embarrassing that the first case Mayor Jerry P. Treñas faced since ascending to the post came from a city hall employee. Instead of Goliath versus Goliath, what city residents are witnessing is Goliath trying to eviscerate David, who fights not for political survival but for a livelihood.
The case arose after an employee was reassigned to a dumpsite in the city’s Mandurriao district after supposedly being identified as a supporter of the previous administration.
If the Treñas minions or the mayor himself are not embarrassed by this, I don’t know how they would handle and absorb the news that has spread about this petty squabble. It’s like an intra-family quarrel that has gone out of control and the public is watching, hearing, and reading about something that should be discussed and settled within the family’s living room.
Sometimes it depends on what kind of advisers are surrounding the city mayor and the suggestions given on how to deal with certain people.
It appears some have more of an axe to grind than the mayor himself but instead of running after the perceived political decoys, they should run after the crooks and rascals. File cases against the thieves, tax cheats, fixers and “ten percenters.”
Treñas is not a vindictive type of leader—I should know. He is one of the few Ilonggo leaders who does not harass critical reporters. I have not heard of Treñas filing a libel case against journalists, but I know he has been one of the most maligned elected officials.
Some unfamiliar with his management style mistook him as “suplado,” or a snob, because he is frank and does not hide his feelings. Who among the tormented candidates in the previous elections had the courage and honesty to cry and empty their emotions “live” on the air? Hours after it became crystal clear that he had won the bitter elections last May, he took to the airwaves and cried while being interviewed by Bombo Radyo anchor Don Dolido.
Thinking back to 1989, Treñas should be careful not to commit the same mistakes made by then-Mayor Rodolfo ‘Roding’ Ganzon, who allegedly harassed his city health officer weeks after assuming the post of mayor.
Ganzon was subsequently sued and enemies of the former senator, led by then-Local Government Secretary Luis Santos, used the issue to slap the mayor with a preventive suspension and the rest was history.
It was socialist revolutionary Karl Marx, co-author of “The Communist Manifesto,” who once said, “History repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce.”

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Alex P. Vidal, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo./WDJ