Flying high

She’s used to flying high, Pam Baricuatro is. As a former flight attendant, altitude is her attitude. But this one is not an empty flight, as she has a degree in political science and has taken post-graduate courses at the City University of Hong Kong and Harvard University. She is best known, though, for her philanthropy as head of the Simply Share Foundation, the first food bank in the Visayas region.

Yet, against the political Goliath that is Gwen Garcia, she was very much the David. Thus, many people snickered when Pam, who was supposed to only contest the congressional seat in the third district of Cebu province, had to step up to the plate after the PDP Laban bet for Cebu governor inconveniently died. She was in for a crash landing, the critics sneered.

At first, it appeared that way. Garcia had all the advantages of incumbency, dynasty and treasury. Her daughter is the Tourism Secretary whose husband is a member of the House of Representatives. In addition, Cebu was far too important for the administration to neglect in the midterm elections that were touted as a referendum on Marcos Jr.’s performance.

Cebu’s three million-plus votes could prove crucial for the Alyansa senatorial candidates. Marcos’ campaign strategists made sure one of their biggest rallies would be held in the province, with Garcia their prime endorser, funding coming out of her ears.

Pam’s night flight, however, may have been more enlightened than political pundits initially thought. While money matters, the people of Cebu had far more gray matter than Garcia estimated. The Cebuanos analyzed her as a politician, who was a staunch ally of former President Arroyo (who had recommended her daughter for tourism chief to Marcos Jr.) and then former President Duterte, and who thereafter turned her back on both after they were no longer in power.

Visayans are a proud and loyal people. Recall that during Marcos Sr.’s time, it was only the Pusyon Bisaya, a regional party, that prevailed over the KBL ticket in the entire nation in the elections for the Batasang Pambansa. Such turncoatism, especially against two former presidents well-loved in the province, could not sit well.

Being a political butterfly is bad enough (look at Sen. Tolentino), but being an arrogant one is well-nigh unforgivable. Flush with what she thought was her clan’s iron grip on Cebu politics, Garcia turned imperious, getting in the way of key infrastructure projects, aggressively engaging critics online and petulantly declaring — after an Ombudsman-issued suspension — that she would not step down.

Instead, she engaged the Ombudsman in a belligerent debate that was neither here nor there on the latter’s powers of suspension, she perhaps secure in the knowledge that the President had her back after Marcos Jr. issued a quaint statement on the rule of law with regard to her suspension.

Garcia’s camp also launched a no-holds barred demolition campaign against Baricuatro, with Congressman Frasco in the lead. Pam, though, never lost her composure, behaving with grace under pressure much like a flight attendant mollifying an unreasonable passenger.

In the end, it was Garcia who ran into a ton of turbulence, suffered an engine flameout, and crashed into the sea. It was pilot error, mostly, on the part of her campaign team for misreading the mood of the people and underestimating the potent and passionate electoral base of the Dutertes, who endorsed Baricuatro. In a state of abject denial when she denounced as “fake” a Pulse Asia survey showing she was losing, she failed to adjust tactics accordingly, and ran out of fuel.