Observations on Jerry,
Jed and Uncle Sam

Finally, a Manila-based contractor, F. F. Cruz, has won the long-delayed bidding to construct a new seven-storey City Hall at much less than the estimated P450-million cost. Therefore, there’s no truth kuno to the rumor that the contractor had made “cashunduan” with city officials and competing bidders.

But why – long after the demolition of the old building – only now? And why at the old, cramped location across Plaza Libertad?  City Hall could have retained a piece of the vast old Mandurriao airport that it had sold to Megaworld!

Well, at least the mayor has the distinction of spending half of his nine years in office in a City Hall within a city mall. Where else but only in Iloilo City is there such a thing?

Brace yourselves for another surprise. Perhaps, for whatever pecuniary gain, the mayor would now pay whatever balance is still due the contractor of the Pavia Housing Project – our equivalent of Greek and Roman ruins.


“I could have taken the law in my hands.”

Those were the brave words of Mayor Geronimo Treñas on the set of a radio-TV interview. He was referring to the alleged harassment suffered by his four minor children while distributing food to the victims of Nabitasan fire. A police bodyguard of the King had allegedly threatened them at gunpoint for “pamolitika.”

It was fortunate for Jerry to have been away from the scene of the incident. Otherwise, he, not Raul Sr. or congressional rival Raul Jr., could have been another Andal Ampatuan.


I predicted many times in this corner that the alliance of Mayor Treñas and the more popular Vice-Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog – NP candidate for congressman and LP candidate for mayor, respectively – would not stand the test of time because Treñas has a different set of candidates for vice-mayor and councilors. Therefore, the two groups could not hold rallies and caucuses together. So kanya-kanyang gastos!

I recently found out from an insider how a slip of tongue betrayed the mayor’s bias. In one of the rare times that Jerry and Jed were together in a caucus with barangay leaders, Jerry endorsed his brod-in-law Joe Espinosa III for vice-mayor, as if completely forgetting that Jed’s running mate is someone else, Jamjam Baronda.

I hope it’s not true that Smokin’ Jerry dislikes Jamjam because the latter has jammed his liberty of smoking in public through her anti-smoking ordinance.

If it’s any consolation, both Jerry and Jamjam certainly hope that the next mayor would be a non-smoker named Jed.


I have spent a lifetime looking for an answer to the question: Who is Uncle Sam?

Of course, while everybody knows “he” is the United States, none of those I have asked could trace its origin.

And then, out of the blue, I recently got hold of a 1949 reprint of an 1832 book, Domestic Manners of the Americans, by Frances Trollope. On page 428 is an appendix on the origin of Uncle Sam:

“During the last war, a magazine of army stores was superintended by Mr. Samuel Wilson, who was familiarly called Uncle Sam. The casks were marked U.S. [referring to the United States]. A person enquired of the workmen what these letters meant. A wag replied that they were the initials of Uncle Sam. That information caught the fancy of the hearer, who sent it to a newspaper. The joke gained favor, and has long been recognized as a national pleasantry throughout the Union.”