Ex-Carmen mayor Conchita “Che” Torribio de los Reyes is back in her feisty element after making her presence felt with the revival of her advocacy group, this time, christening it as “Team Bag-ong Bohol.” Since tangling with Gov. Edgar Chatto in the 2013 gubernatorial combat in which she lost badly, ex-mayor Che is back in action to torment her favorite whipping boy. The ex-lady mayor accused Chatto of not doing enough to lick the alarming drug problem, adding that even the deaths of two police chiefs did not move the governor from his air-conditioned comfort at Capitol. But contrary to Che's allegations, Gov. Chatto is up his neck in addressing the drug problem by waging an all-out war against the perpetrators of the drug menace. According to the ex-mayor, she felt vindicated in last year's elections where the Chatto propaganda machine had pictured her as “Bohol's drug queen.”

The vindication, she said, came in the form of the worsening drug problem that stares the Chatto administration on its face. Why the sudden interest in Che's tirades against the governor? In a press conference Monday signaling the launching of her new advocacy group, the former mayor made it known that she's in for a comeback bid against Gov. Chatto's Capitol seat. Amid food and drinks that flowed like oasis from an unlimited source, the press event was held at Che's Image Marketing building along F. Rocha St., this city, a spitting distance from the Capitol building where Chatto is holding fort. Local mediamen made a beeline to the Image building to cheer or jeer ex-mayor Che's new initiative known as Ang Bag-ong Bohol (ABB), a throwback of “Ang Bag-ong Bolanon,” the same crusading group whose candidates in the 2013 elections were all wiped out by the Chatto juggernaut. It was indeed a grand media hoopla as each media person went home P3,000 richer.

The ex-Carmen chief executive is known to hand down cash to media people as if she is giving them disposable ball pens. Che is proud to have recovered heavily in her business venture to sell whitening products to women so much so that the company has opened branch outlets all over the world. During the press conference, Che was so confident of herself that she even challenged the media people to ask her “below-the-belt questions.” Of course, nobody dared to call her bluff, thinking perhaps that doing so might result in the media man going home empty-handed. With her new political vehicle, Che is banking on the marketability of Vice-President Jejomar Binay as presidential candidate of the opposition in 2016. Binay in recent surveys tops among presidential hopefuls. Che said that as anointed Binay protégé for Bohol governor, she is keeping her hopes alive that the 2013 debacle that she experienced in the hands of the incumbent governor will not rear its ugly head, next time around.