Most Cheesy Feature

If you’re a politician and you want your propaganda machinery to make sure that the people have you at their top-of-mind, what’s the first thing you’d have them do? Popularize your initials. You can call it your Initial Propaganda Salvo, or IPS.

I’ve seen done by Ferdinand Marcos during the 70s. All over the place were signs like “a project of FM” or “Vote FM”, and his initials regularly graced newspaper headlines. Because of Marcos’ success with his initials, other politicians followed suit. Quezon City’s Sonny Belmonte had signs all over the city promoting his “SB” initials. When Bayani Fernando was mayor of Marikina, there were signs all over saying, “BF works!” (He should work his ass off, he is mayor of course!) When his wife Marides succeeded as mayor of Marikina, she wasted no time in placing her initials all over the city. But instead of just having “MCF” signs, she decided to use her initials for different acronyms.

For example, on her first year as mayor she named the city-wide Christmas celebration as “Marikina Christmas Festival”. I thought it was a bit tacky, but compared to her next project, the festival name was sublime in its subtlety. For her follow-up project, she had horse-drawn carriages (called calesas) go around Marikina as part of the city tours offered to tourists. What did she call these horse-driven rides? Marikina Calesa Frolic.

Copywriters should have a field day offering name studies to her other projects. How about setting up an organization of Marikina’s pa-mhintas and call them Marikina’s Closet Faggots? Or create a special wing in the Shoe Museum featuring the tackiest shoes and call it Marikina Cheesy Footwear? Or her political foes from the last elections converge and form Marides’ Campaign Foes?

Have fun coming up with your own acronyms.