The smoke has cleared, and Former President Joseph Estrada is now the incoming Mayor of the nation’s Capital City, Manila. The Manilenos, and Filipinos, in general, now have to bend to the will of the people who voted for Erap as Mayor, even Georgina Wilson herself.
Being 76 years old (b 1937), he is another Manila Mayor born from the prewar days, he might have seen (in his young) Manila in its old Glory: Rizal’s Manila ala mis amores (Manila of our affections) and Joaquin’s Insigne y Siempre Leal Ciudad (Noble and Ever Loyal City). Rizal and Joaquin’s Manila, inspired great literary works, was a great city teeming with great people. With the liberation of Manila in 1945, that Manila vanished physically but continued existing, in literature, in photographs and in nostalgia of the already few people who witnessed that era. It continued existing in Memory. Manila might be the only city in Metro Manila that haven’t had a Mayor that is a postwar baby (if you can correct this fact, feel free to correct me).
The incoming Mayor has a lot of work to do in three years (He promised to sit on one term ONLY and exit from politics). We have a Manila that is the city of our disaffections and an ignoble and faithless city. While three years is a short time span to produce concrete and tangible results results, what the incoming Mayor should do is to be a transitional Mayor: one to implement reforms to heal a financially bleeding city, and to find a visionary and a good successor to do the great things for Manila.
It will be open now that I do not expect something great and substantial from the incoming Mayor given his past track record. It’s not our problem anymore, but it is his big problem to prove us wrong this time.
He has a city and a society to lead. The current Mayor’s goal is to make citizens proud of their Manila again. A proud city is well populated with citizens proud of their city, and we sorely lack that.
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Anonymous
"The result of all of this was a new swagger in the Manileno. Foreigners who came to the city could pride itself in a style - strutted by both dress and manner - that was not European, nor Mexican, nor Chinese, nor even Indio. It was quite simply Filipino.
