Cagayan de Oro mayoral hopeful Jose Gabriel “Pompee” La Viña is again seeking the city’s leadership via substitution, launching on Friday, November 12, another bid for the post that evaded him in 2019 when he was defeated by Mayor Oscar Moreno.

La Viña, the social media director of President Rodrigo Duterte’s 2016 campaign, said he intentionally missed the deadline for the filing of certificate of candidacies (COC) last month because he still had some unfinished business as the administrator of the state-run Phividec Industrial Authority.

On Friday, he submitted his papers to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) office in Cagayan de Oro as a substitute candidate for lawyer Florentino Dumlao III who withdrew his COC for mayor as early as November 11 under the Lakas-CMD.

Dumlao withdrew his COC, which he filed on October 8, on the same day Davao Mayor Sara Duterte, a presumed presidential aspirant, resigned from her regional party Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP), and was sworn in as a member of the Lakas-CMD.

New opponent

With Moreno out of his way, La Viña is facing a new political opponent, Cagayan de Oro 1st District Representative Rolando “Klarex” Uy, the mayor’s preferred successor.

Both Moreno and Uy are serving their last office terms. Moreno is running for Misamis Oriental governor, a post he held in the past, while Uy filed his COC for Cagayan de Oro mayor in October.

La Viña ranked far second to Moreno in the 2019 mayoral race, garnering only 36% of the 252,017 votes cast for four hopefuls that included two independent candidates who bagged only about 1,000 votes each. Moreno won his third mandate in the city that year with 63% of the total votes cast in the mayoral race.

Uy, a silent but formidable opponent, is banking on the vote-rich 1st District of Cagayan de Oro to deliver for him again. In the 2016 congressional race in that district, he won his third and final term with 75.3% of the total votes cast there.

Uy has been well-entrenched especially in Carmen, the city’s most populous barangay, where he started his political career as a barangay chairman, a position he held throughout the ‘90s. 

Uy’s wife Lorna is Carmen’s current barangay chairperson while his son Reiner Joaquin, the city’s vice mayor, is now seeking the congressional post that would be vacated by his father next year.

Government posts

The Phividec, which La Viña headed for over a year, controls a state-owned 3,000-hectare industrial estate in the towns of Tagoloan and Villanueva in Misamis Oriental.

This was the third government position he was appointed to in five years. 

La Viña was first appointed as a commissioner of the Social Security System  (SSS) but was sacked in 2018 following a public fund-abuse controversy. 

He was subsequently appointed as an undersecretary of the Department of Tourism  (DOT) where he served until 2019, the year he first sought the mayorship, and failed to unseat Moreno. – Rappler.com