Duterte's Final Challenge

It’s pathetic watching an outgoing President doing all the desperate moves, first in deciding who should the Liberal Party field as its standard bearer and having done so frantically courts a reluctant non-party mate to help boost the chances of his anointed one. 

By this time and by tradition, President Aquino’s political saga has arrived at a denouement and therefore he ought to relinquish to LP hierarchy the search for the party’s best bet for the Presidency and VP. But the president is woozy. He failed to realize that even in the media he is already assigned a statistical identification – BSA3.

If BSA3 is a pathetic sight, Mar Roxas is even in a worse situation.


The President himself is convinced that without the likes of Grace Poe as a running mate he can never get over the hump in a presidential derby. Woe to Mar. He is similarly situated with VP Jojo Binay who, because of the magma of corruption issues, is being avoided like plague by those he had been offering to be his running mate.


Mar Roxas may not be in a stinking quagmire as Binay but his image as a weakling and of being and idiotic partisan political animal even in the midst of calamities do not augur well for his ultimate ambition. His façade and pretentions to being “maka-masa” do not help him either. Like in the movies, split personality is abhorrent. That he recently articulated that from here on the “public will see the real me” even aggravated his problem and revved up the notoriety of the social media which now say that all the while what we see in Roxas were all “kaplastikan”. 

You catch the fish by its mouth. Meaning a person is caught by what he says. BSA3 and Roxas are caught by what they say. The former saying the latter ought to improve his survey rating and needed Poe to prop his sagging popularity, and, Roxas admitting that what he had been perceived to be is not what he truly is.

Even if Grace Poe may be hoodwinked into running with Roxas, the consummate wish of BSA3 that his bata-bata will make it to Malacanang will remain merely a figment of his imagination. We do not have block-voting in this country so tears only for Mar.

Frankly, whatever cosmetics the LP and Roxas himself will resort to to improve his image is quite too late in the day. His chance is only possible, although not a guarantee, if the Aquino government will jettison all the rotten apples in his cabinet. Ironically, those who are obviously and odiously inutile and had converted their office as spawning ground of corruption were generously praised in the State of the Nation Address. For BSA3 to become an effective and credible endorser of Roxas he, as President, should improve on his own credibility.

What will that leave us? Who will be an alternative? To date we have not heard of a modicum of government agenda from either Binay or Roxas. Binay is busy parrying the arrows that stemmed from corruption and what we hear from him is “politika lang yan”. Roxas is still holding on to the coattails of BSA3 who still insists that his “daang matuwid” is not what his critic is saying a straight path to corruption.

The only remaining option is Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte. He is the nation’s salvation. Unfortunately for us he refuses to heed the clarion call for him to seek the Presidency. Yet he has unfolded before us the most comprehensive reform program and agenda to start with the shift of the unitary government to Federal-parliamentary. In short, he is prepared to share the power of the central government with the regional governments or states. That speaks of his character. This also means that the wealth of the country has to be equitably and justly allocated to the state governments and not be concentrated in Metro Manila.

It is only Mayor Duterte who has a strategy on how to deal with rising tide of criminality in the country and is vocal about restoring death penalty for all heinous crime offenders to include those involve in corruption. He is the sole political figure who minced no words when he speaks of abolishing Congress if within six months to one year there will be no perceptible reforms.

These enumerations are what are exactly needed for radical transformation of a failed system that had abetted corruption. Our values and standard have become so convoluted. Consider the mindset of our national leaders today. From the President down, the general attitude is that the mechanisms of its centerpiece of reform –“Matuwid na Daan” –are working when in fact, like the Metro Rail Transport (MRT), these often break while on the track. 

 
Will Mayor Duterte countenance our destiny to perdition if we are left with a choice between Binay and Roxas. Even if we factor in Grace Poe she can hardly be an alternative choice. She who, not too long ago, was an avowed American Citizen but renounced this to head a government functionary, which in the US, she can only salivate for.

 In sympathy for her adopted father FPJ we voted her senator. She topped the race but is this enough credential to make her a viable candidate who can address the ills besetting the country? She hardly leaves the comfort of the senate hall. Her singular act to stardom was when she headed the investigation of Mamasapano massacre. She concluded the report but kept the results secret from the public. She hugged the limelight and the TV klieg lights but after the drama what?

And so we ask the final question. Will Mayor Duterte surrender our fate to the hand that is so tainted with corruption or to the inept and spineless political characters whose real identities we do not even know or distinguish from what we believed they were supposed to be?

Duterte's Final Challenge by Jun Ledesma