ATTA GIRL.
She’s brave and positive. She’s brave because she’s positive or she’s positive because she’s brave. Or, she’s both, which she needs in the slime-and-grime of Philippine politics, especially presidential politics. Not that these will ensure certain victory, which is vastly uncertain at the moment. But she has a crucial point to prove, and that should not be taken away from her.
Like a true champion and warrior, she’s prepared for the mano-a-mano race with the (in)famous former son of a dictator, and raring with not-so -contagious passion to snatch victory from the brink of defeat. She’s heard loud and clear what the latest survey announced: she’s trailing Bongbong Marcos by the proverbial mile, nearly light years away behind, while time is becoming shorter like nanosecond to the finish line.
As the American writer Todd Gitlin wrote much earlier, the principle behind the passion had to be righteous. In this sense, Leni is an idealist, not a pragmatist. And idealism is all but dead in in the quagmire of Philippine politics. It is supposed to have engaged a wider, bigger public; it is supposed to be, as Gitlin asserted, unignorable.
But is it? The twenty percent she garnered from the latest poll, five months or so before D-Day, as opposed to BBM’s 50 plus percent doesn’t inspire confidence that it’s on its way. Her passion and ideals should have ignited a bigger response from the populace, captured forcefully in their imagination and triggered an unprecedented people’s movement.
Except in few people’s – leaders, political and not, if you will—mind like the nearly forgotten Pampanga congressman and mayor Oscar Rodriguez, with his familiar, routine rhetoric. Call of duty, he was quoted as saying, when he filed his candidacy for mayor as soon as it was sure Leni would be in the hustings. Nobody should expect a proven and tested political warrior like him to just stand on the sideline while Leni’s parade passes by. He must be in the parade as well.
So far, not so good. The political wand that he used to wield has lost its magic. The latest news is that in Angeles City, Leni is the chosen one. No similar good news from the other local fronts. Not surprising, in the land where pragmatism has pervasively reigned for the longest time and dirty money is considered political speech and platform much earlier than anywhere.
Asked on CNN Philippines if she was in favor of the disqualification move in the COMELEC (that was before the poll body ruled), Robredo replied she would rather beat BBM on election day than earned the victory via the several DQs filed against him. It’s clear she doesn’t only envision a political victory but a moral one.
She wanted the narrative, a false one, he proclaimed without batting an eyelash, endlessly repeated by the BBM camp, dumped in the dustbin once and for all : that he was cheated in the vice presidential race six years ago. The Presidential Electoral Tribune had thrown out the bunkum with concrete evidence at least twice, but the bird-brained assertion continues. She’s optimistic that she would be vindicated once more by the electorate. Unfortunately, the optics and numbers are not tangential to her thinking. They’re snapshots, to be sure. But the gap between Point A, where she is is at the moment, and Point B where she aims to be, is still a dismal reality. The indicatives are not consistent with the moral imperatives that she seeks, not just for herself but for the nation.
She has made her point, though. The nation lacks the moral quality, the moral excellence needed to rescue Philippine politics from the deep abyss into which it has fallen. A legal victory in the COMELEC or any court, whether supreme or inferior, can’t make that happen. Only the voters can. That’s the redemption. “If you want to reinvent your country, you have to have the audacity of hope”, former President Barack Obama wrote in his book of the same title.
In other words, what Robredo wants is a changed nation. That’s her audacity because that’s her hope. Apparently, the COMELEC listened, too. Two days ago, the poll body dumped one petition asking for the cancellation of BBM’s candidacy on the ground that he broke the law on tax evasion. The ruling was simple and straightforward: the petitioners didn’t do their homework. The law that BBM allegedly broke didn’t yet exist when he committed the alleged crime involving moral turpitude. No law, no foul, period.
BBM may have won the battle, not necessarily the war. Not yet, anyway. There are other DQ cases pending. Eventually, those who wanted BBM disqualified may have to go to the High Tribunal for the final say. It would be a big bet, anchored on the SC’s supposed independence. Independence means, according to a former justice, a final word based on the law and facts.
In the final analysis, Leni’s immovable position for moral excellence in a field of competition where vice pays tribute to virtue, it’s pretty sobering to recall what Napoleon once said about victory, whether in war or politics. Morality, he said, lies on the heavy side of the artillery.
The latest good news to Leni, on the heels of COMELEC’s junking of an anti-BBM petition, is that 23 former members of the Cabinet of former President Fidel V. Ramos, have manifested their full support for the vice president to be the country’s next president. That’s lot of substance, but not enough.
The Bongbong-Sara tandem, meantime, is a spreading a better political gospel. At least two former presidents (both criminally charged during their tenures) are on their side. The candidates themselves are flaunting their political pedigrees, not exactly exemplary. Against such formidable opponents, Robredo’s sheer audacity rises even more. Democracy is supposed to be based on the conviction that extraordinary possibilities can happen. Cross your fingers.
