MAKABAYAN PARTY List senatorial bet Neri Colmenares, still waiting for possible inclusion in Vice President Leni Robredo’s senatorial slate, has a dire warning to Filipino voters in the 2022 presidential polls. This time, it wouldn’t be just another day at the polling places. It will be the mother of all elections. Stakes will be much higher, in fact, existentially higher.
It’s no less than our country’s survival, Colmenares emphatically insisted in an interview the other night on CNN Philippines. It may be hyperbole, but like any other figure of speech, it’s one that’s aimed at driving the home the truth. The other candidates, senatorial or presidential, have its opposite: hyperbola. Scary prophecy versus sweet promises.
Survival simply means not electing the late dictator son, Bongbong Marcos as president, now and not ever, or any of Duterte’s anointed candidate, now and not ever. From his standpoint, that possibility looms like a perfect storm in Philippine politics with the so-called opposition in a wild, confusing disarray. They have to find a way to unite against Bongbong or Duterte’s chosen, which could also be the one and same person with the president’s daughter disavowing any presidential ambition.
Part of the problem is, there seems to be no definitive agreement or clear demarcation line on which candidate or party belongs to the opposition. For sure, Bongbong doesn’t belong in it in any conceivable way. Sen. Ping Lacson disclaims being against or for the administration or the opposition. Mayor Isko Moreno can’t see Robredo’s anti-Bongbong stance as an acceptable platform. Sen. Manny Pacquiao wants the Marcoses to return the monies that belong to the government. He also demands an apology from Bongbong for his father’s “sins”. Sen. Bato dela Rosa, who’s perceived as the ‘uncandidate’, filed as presidential bet for Duterte’s party from out of the blue. He was muscular both physically and politically in his green shirt, the political color of his idol and benefactor’s daughter. That leaves Robredo as the last Mohican.
In the scheme of things, Bongbong is the immovable object, with Sara Duterte out of the equation. No one among the other rivals is enough to constitute an irresistible force. At least, that’s what the early surveys say.
Even the authentic Robredo, who looks forward to having a principles-based party system if she wins the 202O presidential race, has fallen into some strategic missteps. Her senatorial slate is an odd-mixture of pro- Bongbong, pro-Duterte and pro-both couched in a pro-people slogan.
So far, Bongbong has kept mum over the initial protestations and propositions of the so-called opposition. He is probably reminded of Napoleon Bonaparte’s advice that one should not interrupt an enemy when it is making a mistake. Basing from Colmenares’s soliloquy, Bongbong doesn’t have to bother about how the opposition is doing its political gigs. He’s fine, thank you. Never mind that, at least, one frontrunner is proving to be not anti-Bongbong.
And that’s the whole urgent message of Colmenares. Unless all the other candidates, assuming good faith , will have to make up their mind, they can forget about their wishful thinking of living in Malacanang, with all the power and splendor that go with it. Colmenares wants the opposition to have only one presidential candidate to stand a chance against a formidable enemy like a Bongbong or a Duterte handpicked.
He knows from recent history. If only Mar Roxas or Grace Poe gave way to either in the 2013 presidential polls, Duterte would have remained a small town dictator and not allow the possibility of Bongbong reclaiming Malacanang and resurrecting his father’s old drumbeat that this nation would be great again.
Colmenares’ reality check has a déjà vu writ large. He’s both fearful and fearless in one breath: Bongbong and Duterte and their ilk are the notorious political figures that have to be thrown out in next year’s elections. Or the future is bleak.
Beyond the opposition, or what technically passes for it, Colmenares might as well be appealing to Filipino voters at large as if they were consumers: look for the telltale scratching in their boxes . You may get a plastic toy or a spider along with the expired product. Bongbong and Duterte have those mark as Colminares implied. Buyers beware.
Colmenares’ call to the Filipino electorate to pay careful attention to the current presidential bets, primarily Bongbong and whoever Duterte anoints, is poignantly illustrated by American journalist Christ Matthews during the Bill Clinton era.
“We, 49 percent of us at least, bought this box of cereal called Bill Clinton”, Matthews said in an interview, as quoted by Marvin OLasky in his book ‘The American Leadership Tradition’. “ Inside some of us expected to find, perhaps, one of those little plastic toys slipped in between the box and the wax paper.” It turned out, as Matthew concluded satirically, the American voters got a spider “ an eight legged hairy bug” instead of a good breakfast.
Matthew’s moral: “ We now have to live with it, including those who were so hungry for leadership in this aging century that we heard it and discounted back when we had the choice… that telltale scratching in the box.”
Colmenares is waking up his Filipino audience about that crucial choice. Robredo’s relentless call resonated with incessant reminder of the grave perils of ignoring the scratching in Philippine politics by Marcos, the Senior and Duterte and his enablers. Their messages are essentially the same: never again.
Is the Filipino voter listening to the alarm bells? Or does he or she hear Circe’s enticing song?
