He is his own fairy tale. The Prince Charming of his own story. No fairy godmother intervened. No deus ex machina. He made his own powder dust. Even his own magic wand. With no sleight of hand but with his own grit, he created Cinderella Man out of him. And for this, the people have picked him as their People’s Choice awardee in the forthcoming People of the Year 2020 awards.
Art Direction by Ramon Joseph J. Ruiz
Photography by Mau Aguasin
Who would have thought this would be my life? That this would happen to me?” Isko Moreno begins. The spotlight was speckled on him the minute he started working on July 1, 2019 as the new mayor of the City of Manila. The limelight he is in now is so much brighter than when he started in Tinseltown.
His disbelief is understandable. He came from nothing, says the 45-year-old mayor. The dumpsite called Smokey Mountain was his Mount Olympus. Garbage was both gold and god. It was his source of income then.
Garbage is still a problem in his city but with his leadership, “people have become conscious about order and cleanliness.”
From the time he assumed office as the chief executive of the country’s capital, Isko, whose real name is Francisco Domagoso, has yet to put a halt to his desire to put order to “the city that has been neglected for two decades.”
Dream of rebuilding
Now, the titans of the business community come to him, ready to help, to shower him with friendship and funding so his dream of rebuilding Manila will take flight.
The city government has tied up with Republic Cement and Unilever, among other companies “to lessen the load of our garbage in our dumpsites by buying back the garbage.”
“Forty-eight percent of our budget for 2020 will go to social amelioration programs. That’s education, healthcare and housing,” he says. Manila has a reported yearly budget of P14 billion.
“My personal belief is that if we address the quality of life of the people, naturally you’re building a community. Community is not only based on infrastructure and edifice. It’s about the people who live in it. So if we have good members of the community in their respective geography, then naturally Manila will grow,” he adds.
Isko’s high profile as a public servant has earned him many a moniker. “Rock star” is one. His prominence is felt and seen in all the islands of the Philippines that he has become a household name. His popularity is immeasurable, thanks in big part to his good governance amplified by the social media. (“I listen to netizens. I answer their private messages on FB; that’s the first thing I do when I wake up. The netizens are now part of the local government of Manila—in terms of policymaking.
Next PH president?
“Will you be the next President of the Philippines?” PeopleAsia asks him.
“I don’t know. Ikaw naman. Ano ka ba? Manila lang ako,” he laughs. (Huh, what are saying? I’m focused only on Manila.)
“Malayo pa ako. Wala pa akong nagagawa. Marami pa tayong gagawin (I’ve a long way to go. I haven’t done much. There is much that needs to be done),” he continues while laughing and seemingly choking on his every short retort.
On his first few days at work as mayor of the City of Manila, he was seen with a megaphone and a sledgehammer. “Umpisa na ito ng tunay pagbabago sa Maynila (This is where real change begins in Manila),” he said on a live feed on his Facebook account.
Next thing people knew, the chaotic streets of Recto, Divisoria, Soler and Carriedo were rid of illegal sidewalk vendors. He returned the streets to the people. Traffic in those areas then came with ease. Even structures that were illegally constructed were torn down. “Kapag nagsikip ulit dito, ibig sabihin tumangap ako (should it become crowded here once more, it would mean I have been bribed),” he said. And the words tolongges (corrupt individuals), Eddie and Patty (for ‘eh di siya and pati siya,’ in reference to people from the government who receive bribes), gay-la (lagay or bribe) among other words became popular vocabulary as Isko rid his city with corruption. Isko is referred to as Yor-me for Mayor.
People say Isko is effective in his mandate because he is a dyed- in-the-wool Manileño. He knows Manila like the back of his hand. He grew up in Tondo.
Isko is now comfortable being in his barong or dapper suit— the exact opposite of his short-pants days, back when he was driving a pedicab and pushing a cart to collect old newspapers and used bottles in almost every nook and cranny of Tondo. The only child of a stevedore father and a homemaker mother, Isko learned early on in life how to work so he could contribute to the family kitty.
Things would change for the better for him when a talent scout spotted him in a wake in Manila. In 1992, the pedicab driver Isko became a mainstay of the German Moreno show called That’s Entertainment. The actor in Isko was crafted. It helped that he was blessed with good looks, expressive eyes and bushy eyebrows that defined his own brand in the cutthroat industry of show business.
In 1995, this writer became friends with Isko when the actor starred in one of the telesines I produced with my best friend. This friendship led me to helping Isko in his tapsilogan in Moriones, Tondo. We would buy the beef in Asuncion market that Isko would marinate, to be served as tapa in his eatery. In many instances, I would help Isko in taking orders and washing the dishes—all for the sake of friendship and free meals! When he bought his first ever car, a malachite green Volkswagen, Isko brought our group to Baguio to test drive the brand-new vehicle.
Goodbye to show biz
In 1998, while he was at the peak of his career in Tinseltown, he bade showbiz adieu and entered politics. He thought he could serve better if he were in public service. Despite being inexperienced, he gave his all in the campaign and won as first-time councilor of Manila. He then became vice mayor of the city. He run for a seat in the senate in 2016 but lost.
He aspired to be the city mayor and won in May 2019 election, dislodging re-electionist Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada, a former president of the Philippines, and even beating another formidabe contender, former Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim. Isko garnered 357,925 votes out of the 675,125 people who actually voted.
“Being a mayor, you have the opportunity to change people’s lives. That’s the best part of my job. You can introduce economically viable solutions to address the basic needs of the people. That’s my biggest trophy so far,” he says.
It’s also his trophy that he has a supportive wife. And their five children are his sources of joy, the eldest is 22, the youngest, seven. With his almost round-the clock schedule, does he get tired? “Well, physically yes. I’m tired. I’m still a human being. I am no robot. But mentally, emotionally, psychologically, I’m catching up,” he says, adding that he takes two kinds of vitamins to help him stay healthy and focused. (One time, he went to work with an IV drip.)
“I also take vitamins for my brain—I read a lot. I read studies of NGOs, technocrats, members of government. I read whatever is available. I also read whatever is online. I am for non-stop learning, to widen my ability to understand the things that I will do,” says Isko, who in 2015, took up an executive program in Said Business School at the University of Oxford in England.
Efforts at self-improvement
To say that Isko is self-made is underlining the obvious. So his detractors in politics wouldn’t have the chance to belittle him when he started his career in public service, he took the effort to study. Isko enrolled in crash courses at the University of the Philippines taking up Local Legislation and Local Finance. He studied Public Administration at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila while religiously attending to his constituents. He was also sent by the US Embassy to attend a leadership seminar in Washington.
Being sleep-deprived is the price he has to pay “for leading a chaotic city.” He adds, “As I have said, we need to catch up with lost opportunities, from the past 20 years. That’s 20 years of stagnation, of passiveness. We have to be active.”
In all this, Isko never forgets to pray.
“Humihingi ako ng mga kaptawaran sa aking mga kasalanan. Nagpapasalamat ako sa mga bagay na ipinagkaloob sa akin ng Diyos. At higit sa lahat, humihingi ako ng guidance (I ask for forgiveness for my sins. I thank the Lord for what I have been given. More importantly, I ask for guidance.) I will not be right all the time. But I ask God to please make me just,” he says.
His life is his own fairy tale. Every fairy tale has a good ending. And Isko Moreno lives happily ever after to tell his story.
