Our leader is tired. But he can’t rest

JERRY P. TREÑAS, a lawyer who chose to live a significant part of his life as a politician, is getting tired of his current career? He is tired of weighing the choices he has to make for the benefit of the greater number of people. For the greater number of people, he said. Not the greatest good for the greatest number of people, he said not.

Life is full of choices, indeed. In fact, what to do with your life has been and is always a matter of choice. Where your choices lead to and what your choices amount to is something that entirely you should own.

Playing the martyr’s role for society’s benefit has come in handy for certain humans, especially politicians. The moment they start expressing hurt and sadness or when they start telling us of the mental, physical, and emotional burdens they carry, well, they may actually be illuminating us the way some fathers would illuminate their children to whom they owe their lives.

Or how parents should remind their children about gratitude, on how they dropped their soiled underwear to give them life. As if the children have the freedom to choose who their parents would be.

If, indeed, Mayor Treñas is tired, nobody has the legal and moral right to stop him from exiting the stage that he has served since the time he became councilor in the past century up to the time in 2001 when he first became city mayor (thanks to the late Congressman Raul Gonzalez Sr., the late Larry Jamora and the late Mayor Mansueto Malabor). To strangers, let us remind you that our dear Mayor Treñas became councilor for several years before he became city mayor for five terms and counting, and congressman for nine years. If he so decides, his sixth term as city mayor which will start in 2025 will mark his fourth decade in public service.

Gratitude bites. And it bites both ways. The ruled lend their sovereign power to the rulers. The ruled applaud and feel indebted when the rulers perform. The rulers applaud the ruled when the former obtain more time and power from the latter.

Position and power call for sacrifices. People who get to occupy and wield this siamese twin must have deliberated on this long and hard before taking on the task of governing and governance. People who succeed in occupying and wielding the same must have also projected the risks and the rewards. Even if these risks and rewards extend to their sons and daughters. Whether Honorable Mayor Jerry Treñas is low on risks and high on rewards is anybody’s guess. But people don’t have to guess at all what actually is on his mind. They just have to notice the ubiquitous billboards bearing the faces and names of his children; and interpret the meaning of “uswag”, “level up”, and “my heart beats in Iloilo City” to draw a nearest-to-truth conclusion.

No rest for the weary