A City Council snub, not a solo act

There are days when Iloilo City Hall feels less like a legislative chamber and more like a small royal court that accidentally wandered into a public building.

Everybody is dressed for governance. Everybody says the right words about service.

And then somebody opens his mouth and suddenly the whole room sounds like a family group chat with microphones.

Take the now-famous “princess politics” episode.

Councilor Rex Marcus Sarabia has absorbed most of the outrage, and not without reason, because if you are the one who lights the match, people generally remember your hand before they remember the dry grass.

Still, let us not act like this was a one-man production staged by a lone knight of bad judgment. The resolution honoring Vice Mayor Love Baronda did not die from a single sentence. It was killed by the majority. Collectively, with quorum and procedure.

With all the cold efficiency of people who would rather not clap and then act surprised when the silence becomes the story.

That is the part that gets lost when all the heat is directed at Councilor Sarabia alone. He may have provided the line that people will remember, but the council majority provided the numbers. He said “princess politics.” The rest, in effect, said, “Yes, let’s go with that mood.”

That is what makes the whole thing richer as satire. Because the city’s ruling bloc managed to do something almost artistic.

They denied a courtesy resolution to a local official who had just scored a national leadership post, then watched as other legislative bodies stepped in to honor her anyway, and still somehow ended up looking confused that the public saw the snub for what it was.

It is the political equivalent of refusing to bring a gift to a birthday party, then getting irritated because the neighbors arrived with cake.

And Councilor Sarabia, poor man, now stands in the middle of it like the volunteer spokesman for a decision everybody else helped make but few seem eager to own.

Maybe he is brave. Maybe he is loyal. Maybe he just drew the shortest straw in a room full of people who prefer their daggers ceremonial and their fingerprints absent.

Because that is the unanswered question in all this: What exactly was in it for him. Why was he the one sent out into the storm carrying both the siege machine and the apology nobody else wanted to make.

Why did the others, who voted as part of the same majority, suddenly discover the spiritual value of silence.

It is almost touching. The man gets roasted in public while his colleagues sit there like extras in a palace drama, staring very hard at the curtains.

Councilor Sarabia, for reasons known only to his conscience, his courage, or his appetite for incoming fire, simply volunteered to become the face of it.

And what a face to volunteer. He held both the siege machine and the ramparts, as the old line goes, and then seemed genuinely surprised that the arrows came flying back.

One almost has to admire the commitment.

Most politicians, when involved in something unpopular, suddenly become students of silence.

They speak in fog. They hide in process. They wait for the news cycle to get bored.

But Councilor Rex went in there and basically said, yes, I am here, yes, I have thoughts, and yes, I will use the phrase “princess politics” in the year of our Lord 2026 as if that will somehow improve the optics.

That takes a certain kind of nerve. Or a certain kind of faith in your own damage tolerance.

Still, the larger absurdity remains. Why is the rest of the city council acting as though this was a solo album when it was clearly produced by a full band. The majority voted. The majority decided.

The majority declined to honor an Ilongga public official for an achievement that other legislative bodies immediately recognized as worth commending.

That contrast is what made the whole thing look so small. The Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Iloilo found a way. The SK Federation found a way.

Others looked at the situation and thought, this costs us nothing, this is basic courtesy, this reflects well on Iloilo, let us not overcomplicate it.

Then the City Council majority apparently looked at the same situation and decided, no, let us instead create a controversy so needless and so avoidable that it practically arrives prepackaged with its own backlash. This is self-sabotage with quorum.

And yet Councilor Rex Sarabia alone gets dragged like he personally unplugged the microphone, shredded the resolution, and declared war on decorum while the rest of the chamber just happened to be out buying snacks.

No. That is too generous to the others. Silence is not innocence. A quiet vote is still a vote. A discreet snub is still a snub. The difference is that Councilor Sarabia said the impolite part out loud, which made him useful.

Every political bloc, when cornered, needs one person reckless enough or loyal enough to absorb the blast. Sometimes that person is a tactician or a true believer.

Sometimes he is just the unfortunate volunteer who thinks charging into cannon fire counts as messaging discipline.

Maybe Councilor Rex is brave. Maybe he is stubborn. Maybe he simply believes what he said and did not care whether it burned. That can happen in politics too. But bravery is not the same thing as solitary guilt.

If his colleagues truly disagreed with the snub, they had every chance to say so. If they thought the remark was beneath the dignity of the council, they could have distanced themselves. If they believed honoring Baronda was the proper thing to do, they could have voted that way.

Instead, what the public got was the usual political masterpiece, collective action followed by individual disappearance.

So yes, Councilor Sarabia makes for a catchy character. He is easy to ridicule. He earned a fair bit of that ridicule himself.

But the court should not escape inspection just because one prince wandered into the courtyard and started speaking in subtitles.

The problem was never just one man’s mouth. It was the many hands behind the decision, and the many lips now pretending they were never in the room.