THREE CONVERGING OPPORTUNITIES TO TRANSFORM PH IN 2022 ELECTION

 

Your Leni vote can work miracles in three ways:

1. EXORCISE THE MARCOS GHOST

“I will not sleep there [Malacanang Palace]. All the ghosts that passed the Philippines are all there. They are walking... They’re still there and sometimes they’ll hold a conference, we’ll let them.” (PRRD)

Not to the kind of “ghosts” that PRRD narrated above, I refer rather to the “shadow” of former President Ferdinand Marcos who was in power for 21 years between 1965 and 1986. Barron’s rough list of decay the Marcos regime left behind is a good public service effort to educate young voters largely unaware of how Marcos destroyed their nation: the 1970s brutal Martial Law, military tribunals, political rival disappearance, economic devastation, decimated industries, the Swiss bank accounts, Imelda’s 1,200 pairs of shoes and diamond tiaras, the assaults on press freedom, election fraud, the palatial estates in America, the collection of Michaelangelos, Rembrandts, and Van Goghs, among others.

Enacted in 1987 to prevent the repeat of Marcos’ dictatorship, the current constitution allows for only one presidential term of six years. But, the Marcoses through Bongbong is now haunting the whole nation by creeping up on the door of the presidency with a Duterte daughter Sara propping up the advance by thumbing her nose at the kernel of election substitution rules.

Even the columnist Antonio Contreras of pro-Duterte The Manila Times has qualms about Bongbong Marcos:

“I see Marcos as merely continuing most of the policies of the Duterte administration, and I would have wanted him to define more his differences from a regime I have learned to dislike over the years, after briefly supporting it at the beginning. I also honestly believe that he should apologize for the things that happened during his father’s term. I have a problem with his seeming inability to admit a mistake, even obvious ones… [Marcos] is doubling down by stating that he has always been ‘forthright on his conferment of a special diploma in social studies by the distinguished university and has never misrepresented his Oxford education. ‘Never’ is such a strong denial, when he posted that he got a BA in philosophy, political science, and economics in his Senate profile. The fact that he later changed it to a special diploma in social studies is a tacit recognition of the misrepresentation. I also have problems with his failure to file his income tax returns, for which he was convicted.”

2. REJECT THE DUTERTES FOR THEIR PH MOCKERY

Q: What is the most crucial part of a basketball game?

A: Last two minutes.

Piece of cake.

Q. What is the most crucial part of a party?

A. Last two minutes.

Example.

It’s usually at the end of a party, during the take-care-stay-safe-so-long parting time when one or two guests would “seize the moment” and would say to the host: “Would you mind if… from one,” or “I have something to tell you…” from an intimate. And the personal sharing may last until the wee hours of the morning.

Q. What is the most crucial part of leadership?

A. Last two minutes.

A mind-boggler, let me explain.

“Whatever you want to call it, the US still can’t find four men who can pass the baton to one another while running as fast as they can. For the fourth straight Olympics, US men failed to win a medal in an event they once owned. The favored Americans finished sixth in their 4 x 100-meter relay heat and didn’t qualify for the final largely because Fred Kerley and Ronnie Baker botched the baton pass between the relay’s second and third leg.” (Yahoo News)

The last two minutes in Leadership is defined by the words of the former world No.1 tennis player Billie Jean King who said, “Create your legacy and pass the baton” – a profound metaphor for legacy-making and leadership succession. John C. Maxwell in his book “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” stressed, “A legacy is created only when a person puts his organization into the position to do great things WITHOUT HIM” (Underscoring mine). As to the leadership succession, although passing the baton makes or breaks the races that take just a blink of an eye, it is the HEART of the passer that really matters in the fullness of time.

Carl Lewis called the botched US baton-passing of the US Olympic team “a total embarrassment.” Trayvon Brommel, the first US junior to break the 10-second barrier in the 100 meters with a time of 9.97 seconds said of such botched baton passing: “BS.”

Q. What are our local pundits say about PRRD leadership’s last two minutes on legacy-making and baton-passing act?

A. Circus, Mockery, Frankenstein, Sarazwela, Musical chairs, Pretense, Drama, among others.

3. RESTORE PH MORAL STANDING ON WORLD STAGE

This is an uphill climb for all of us Pinoys.

Let’s read the Time cover when PRRD was elected in 2016 flashed all over the world with the banner: “Why Did the Philippines Just Elect a Guy Who Jokes About Rape as Its President?”

“[Millions] of voters in the Philippines went to the polls to vote for their next President. The apparent winner, with nearly two-fifths of the vote: Rodrigo Duterte, the 71-year-old populist mayor who gained international attention with a string of gleeful gaffes. John Oliver described him as the ‘Trump of the East,’ but Duterte makes Trump sound like a Sunday school teacher: in November he called Pope Francis ‘a son of a whore’; last month, he expressed disappointment at the fact that he did not get to participate in the 1989 gang rape of a ‘beautiful’ Australian missionary.” Let alone he called Obama “black son of a bitch.”

Today, Bongbong leads the presidential survey (if correct), with Sara Duterte as his vice-president propping up his advance. It is chilling to imagine a Time magazine with the following future headline:

“Why Did the Philippines Just Elect a Son of a Dictator That Plundered Their Nation?

Surreal. Appalling.