Published January 29, 2001

Straddling two sides in politics is an invitation to be pushed over the victorious side. It is also the art of, for a very few, knowing precisely when to jump onto and ride the winner horse.

The Filipino excels in that. He is also the master of self-reinvention. Changes in the balance of power have never been an obstacle for those who have acquired the nimble skills or the wardrobe to suit each situation.

Of the latter, however, there are no guarantees except the capacity to calibrate the how. Unfortunately, no matter how skillfully that may be applied, the would-be turncoat can be burned badly. Take the case of those senators and cabinet officials who tried to do the switch their hero in the last day of EDSA Dos.

They obviously erred by a few hours. And, despite their desperate attempts, they surfaced like so many drowning creatures gasping for political air.

But, is anybody complaining? None, I'd say. If anything, this provided for a nice sideshow. The more vindictive would say they only provided for more targets for post-EDSA potshots. Credit should be given to those to whom credit is due.

That done, however, the hopefully reshaped body politic should consider the slyer operators. These are the expert fence sitters.

These are the nicely clad and titled figures who have in the past decade or so managed to rig, juggle and stump themselves through the interesting times we've gone through as a nation since 1986. It is the fence sitters who have survived, more in the extreme than those who chose the more definitive course.

Their "secret" has been to pretend distance from the power plays of the big boys, put up the front of being mere pawns in the great board and yet somehow place themselves correctly when the lines of power and pelf assume solid dimensions.

Silence first, and then the appropriate noises when the obvious turn of the screw is final. When that happens, well, it becomes only a matter of churning out the obligatory "I support the new dispensation" press release.

The best justification for that, of course, is "the constituency that I represent." What better excuse for silence in the face of local and national venality? It is easiest to turn a winking eye on wrongdoing while it is committed in one's favor while at a later convenient time blame the same malfeasance on a deposed and discredited non-government.

Never mind that one will have raked in millions of pesos in dubious returns. Or that another pretense might wash over and cloud the public eye to the three years of misleading the people.

Three presidencies have come and gone. For localities like Baguio, in specific, and the Cordillera in the more general, none have translated into substantial change.

The peoples of these northern Philippines skylands have not seen any fulfillment of the promises. Baguio itself has been merely the handmaiden of a City Hall dedicated to its own secret and murky agenda. So has the province of Benguet. Shudder us all tha t the rest of the Cordillera has been put at the mercy of a grasping few.

How so? I'd say that much of the fault lies at the door of the fence sitters. Through it all – the Cory, the FVR, the Erap and now Gloria administration - the expert, but hopefully luckless few, now - have managed to impose themselves on us all. Whether by artifice or well-meaning density, they have clouded the public eye to what should be clear.

Never mind EDSA, never mind Gloria. For Baguio and the Cordillera, the concern remains. This city and the region itself has got to focus on the agenda of claiming its due. This lies in the unique, the only and the one heritage that befalls this corner of the republic.

But, that is getting a bit far from where we posed the initial question, that of sitting on a fence.

Propose it now, then, that all who would want to represent Baguio and the Cordillera get off the straddle and commit either way. Given the manner in which local, national and even global matters have been transpiring, it so-called behooves even us in the se boondocks to be firm. No more, no less.

Some years ago, an Igorot leader sat on a fence. He did the same thing a few years later. Last year, he managed to do another pretend.

His accomplice cannot do the same, having committed himself earlier to one commitment. Both would now have us believe that they were all the while on the side of righteousness. One has to wonder about the politics of it all.

This column does not straddle anything, nor do we sit on the fence. There is a people out there that cares and for whom we care. IBA TAYO.