This series is intended to provide our local candidates a platform to communicate their message to the electorate. I invite our readers to interact with us in a healthy discussion of the issues raised in each of my installments. Please visit our Facebook page @SunstarCDO. Again, this is not an endorsement, just a ground for us to know our candidates a little better as they lay down their platforms for the 2019 midterm elections.
THE only rose among the thorns in the Oro mayoral race, Candy Darimbang, shared how she initiated the forging of a coalition of opposition parties Padayan Pilipino and Centrist Democratic Party (CDP) with her Partido Federal ng Pilipinas (PFP). Yet her plan to topple the strength of the incumbent mayor was cut short when she broke away from the coalition due to a fallout and filed her certificate of candidacy to join the Oro mayoral race. Now she says none of the opposition parties including hers would have the numbers and the machinery to defeat the incumbent mayor. And it is very sad she says because what we have now is not the Cagayan de Oro City she envisions.
Painted in her face and embedded in her voice all throughout our interview last Tuesday was the clear disappointment on how local political groups pushed her around over the years and wrestled to box her out of politics. She said none of the public offices she bid before where her original decisions. Local players made sure she got placed on a disadvantage position. Yet time and again, Candy resurfaces with grace and faces her opponents head on; showing strong resiliency and unwavering passion to lead.
Who then is Candy Darimbang? Candy grew up very exposed to public service through her mother who was a Teniente del Barrio of barangay Patag in her early years. In 2004 she was endorsed by a group of Muslim associations to be their representative in the City Council but the endorsement was ignored by the mayor then. In 2016 all she intended was to run for vice mayor but the political kingpin asked her to run for congress instead. This 2019 midterm elections, she also just wants to run for vice mayor, a bid that was never entertained by the coalition she helped form, thus the break away.
"I am not yet even closing my doors on possible swapping of positions knowing full well how hard it would be to go up against Oca Moreno," Darimbang said.
Sensing cold feet, I asked her what kind of Cagayan de Oro she envisions for which she hastily replied explaining that she was born here and that she saw just how things were neglected from peace and order, traffic, flooding, and even health. She commits to simply work on those things that were ignored by the administration.
Candy dreams of Cagayan de Oro to be a premier tourist destination since the city has just so much to offer. And such can be put in place with not just the funding from the national offices but also through the entry of local and international investors to propel our economy.
For her, it is wrong to put so much burden on our local businessmen in terms of taxes as it would discourage them from expanding their operations here. There are ways to be more resourceful she said, something she is good at.
She admitted she did not receive support from the administration while she was serving as city councilor for the first district but despite the lack of support her sponsored ordinances such as the regulation of plastic use are now being implemented.
"I am an underdog, Churchill. I get discriminated for being a woman and being a wife of a Muslim. But when I won the City Council seat in the first district, and number 1 at that, Kagay-anons prove my opponents that being a Muslim is not a hindrance to serving a christian dominated city, " she said.
"I am a strong person, but I am a team player. I can work with anyone so long as it is within the bounds of law," she added.
When asked what her ultimate intention really is in running, she says she simply wants to bring the best for the city and the people in it.
With the unpredictability of local politics we can never tell this early if Candy Darimbang may just be our first elected woman mayor.
