March 29, 2024

(First of three parts)

I like Vice President Leni Robredo. I like her spunk and her fighting spirit.
I like her honesty, especially when she admitted that she took the Bar exams twice and that she was plunged into politics to continue the virtues of her late husband, Jesse Robredo.
From a demure housewife, she rose from the ranks to become the leader of a major political party. The meteoric rise of her popularity had her deservedly nominated and selected as the official candidate of the Liberal Party. Though she filed her certificate of candidacy as an “independent” and avoided using the “dilawan,” there is no mistaking that her pink is as yellow as the Liberal Party. If she wins, there will be no confusing that pink is the same color as yellow.
That is, if she wins.
Because from all indications and based on current surveys, she has a mountain to climb. However, she is unfazed which is true to her character as a fighter. She never gives up. She likens her chances to that of President Rodrigo Duterte who, during the initial stages of the 2016 election, was trailing all candidates in surveys by a mile only to rise like a phoenix to capture the ultimate prize.
Well, there is no similarity between the two. Duterte initially trailed all other candidates during his time because at the time the surveys were taken, he was not yet officially a candidate. Remember that he was only a substitute candidate. Not so with Leni.
At the onset, Robredo was candid enough to admit that the primary motivating reason why she is seeking the presidency is in order for her to thwart Bongbong Marcos, Jr. from gaining ground. Really?
Whether it is right or wrong, she and her campaign managers are on a streak to tell the people why Marcos does not deserve to become president. She tells us that Marcos Jr. is asserting an entitlement to the position of president which is not right. That Marcos Jr. ought to admit the faults of his family and confess to the various human rights abuses perpetrated during the regime of his father. That he must return the loot taken by his family, etc, etc.
I think the Filipino people deserve more from her than hearing her rapture about how evil the Marcoses are. Oh well, I can’t blame her. Hate sells and if it is the only way to sell herself, why not? After all, some other candidates are doing the same, enough reason for concerned individuals to plead to them to please stop this destructive kind of politics.
If this kind of mentality is a prelude to what will happen if she becomes president, then, I don’t like it. A substantial number of our people will be disenfranchised and alienated because they are Marcos fanatics, much like what happened when former President Cory Aquino took the reins of the government. Her first move was to remove and isolate all who supported the dictator and change them with people of her personal liking. That much, is not what we expect from an icon of democracy. That much is what the Liberals do. Still, they call this the “Cory magic,” as if Cory transformed this country into one that is the best in the world. This the moment that Leni seeks to promote.
But has she and her camp bothered to examine what the “Cory magic” did to us? To our country? To our unity?
Cory and her martyred husband have always been associated with the restoration of Philippine democracy. She, in fact, was nominated for a Nobel peace prize.
Looking back, is what Cory stood for really the kind of democracy that is fitted for our people? That brand of democracy was one where every individual has the absolute right and discretion to do as he/she pleases regardless of the consequences. It is a brand of democracy that freed all communists and transferred all state-owned industries into the hands of private entities. She called this privatization.
One that abolished all government projects of the past dispensation, necessary or unnecessary, for the sake of freedom. We are where we are today because let’s admit it, it failed.
(To be continued)