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Tibbs of the Forty-Five Days
By A.M.B. Apalisok
 

      There’s nothing outlandish to his nickname that’s spelled with a double ‘b’; that’s just the way it appears on my cell phone.  His given name anyway smacks of the dons of old, the likely fate of sons chosen to become their fathers’ juniors. 

      Tibbs, a.k.a. Bong, is Tiburcio Bullecer, Jr., erstwhile vice-mayor of Loay town and lately the mayoral candidate of a party that didn’t make it.  That is, after slogging it out in the recent 45-day political campaign.  Had Tibbs won, I wouldn’t be writing this.   

      Winning in the political game is a flush of victory followed by planning for one’s term of public office and the allotment of spoils? the return of favors coupled with a raft of favor-seekers.   The former is a hope, the latter a strain.  But politics is a game, and thus is how the game is played.

      Losing is a different world altogether.  It makes one assess the whys and wherefores of how the game was played, reach inward for that hidden reserve strength, and open one’s self to other possibilities.

      I first met Tibbs during our father’s funeral wake.  He offered his condolences and introduced himself, saying that he once took the speech course offered by my kid sister.  I clearly remember that scene because he struck me as a young man comfortable in his own skin, with hair combed neatly like that of a high school seminarian.  Sans the usual politician’s middle pouch (that was then!), he carried himself with just the right social graces.   Years later that young man married our father’s eldest granddaughter, a union that effectively made him my nephew. 

      Now it can be told.  Before that marriage I got to know Tibbs more through my niece who took to calling me in Germany to pour herself out over her confusion about her potential beau, and I listened to her sighs that things would have been simpler had her Papalo (our father) been around.  I, too, missed our father, and I believed every word she said.   

      Tibbs was orphaned early of a father.  His youngest sibling was just a baby then.  He took control of his own life, became a pillar of strength to his widowed mother, and developed himself any way he could, from sending himself to school by working on the side and joining all kinds of contests to gain experience. 

       His life struck me as well-meaning and well-lived.  The bonus was that there was one thing about him that I understood and held kinship with:  he loves animals.  (Come on, if one is kind to animals, even if by a long shot that animal takes on a human form, one can’t be so bad, huh?)

      Tibbs is an engineer by profession and a politician by vocation.  He had served his town as an elected official for over ten years.  In the latest elections, I understand that he was considered for a provincial level candidacy.  He refused as it would mean leaving his local group.  It was a commitment that he nurtured and meant to keep.  I surmise that in the backroom deals of political horse-trading, a leading party didn’t choose him as its mayoral candidate.

      All politics is local, and Tibbs was thus deprived of a strong party’s support and had his war chest diminished.   I appreciate it that help was never asked of us, monetary or otherwise.  We may unite in shared sorrows, but filial independence is strong.  Even if I had something to contribute (which I didn’t have), I’d still favor donating to animal welfare groups, never to any next-of-kin’s political pursuits.  Thus I didn’t know who was running for what until I learned the results.

      That Tibbs is a good loser I have no doubt.  All the world loves a winner; rare is the good loser though who gracefully bows out in strategic defeat.  Sure, there’s no substitute for victory, but in life, as in real battles, putting up a good fight is just as victorious.  The defeated Aeneas in the Trojan War was the nobler hero who later found Rome while Achilles, the vengeful and victorious one, was eventually felled by nothing but an arrow through his heel.     

      Call it by whatever fruit, sour grapes or sweet lemon, losing in the political game is a fascinating salad.  Winning makes one an eagle taking wing.  Losing makes one a phoenix.  One can die and rise from the ashes to fight another day.               

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