WE HAVE blown it, over and over, according to Vice President Leni Robredo, in an answer to a question in a presidential interview on what’s wrong with us. We seem to have not learned the lessons from our experiences, sad and bad. So– with accent on the conjunction– we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over, again and again. Mistakes are a multiplier when they are constant.
Our fate is not in the fixed stars but in ourselves, decided Cassius before he and his cohorts took matters into their hands and changed Rome’s history. The French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre was brief and blunt : we are our choices.
What have been the costs and consequences of making the wrong choices with our leaders, especially our presidents?
In a column a few days ago by Jesus Estanislao and Jose Cuisia, Jr. former finance secretary and Central Bank governor, respectively, the ruinous and woeful effects of bad leadership on the country’s economy and on the poor, among others, were made known to the nation clinging to surveys like drunkard to a lamppost for support, not enlightenment.
Citing a study, the two former officials noted that the country’s real GDP (gross domestic product) was going downward and unstable from 1946 until 1986. It has been going upward and consistently since 1986. Before martial law, the Philippines was second to Japan in Asia in growth and development. Had it not been stalled and stagnated by poor and corrupt leadership, we could have been at par with South Korea and Taiwan, so-called tiger economies. Given that unmistakable direction, we would have become better and stronger militarily to assert our rights in the West Philippines Sea where we are being helplessly pushed by a bully China.
The column also pointed out that poverty incidence was much higher in the decade leading to 1986. It was brought down to lower percentages in the decade after 1986. In 1985, poverty rate in the country was 49 percent; it dropped by 17 percent in 2018. Because of the adverse effects of the pandemic and the consensus by economic experts that the Duterte administration has badly managed the . economy during the health crisis, our poverty should conceivably be higher now. The fact that we are now ranked 133rd in the global corruption index is a no-brainer.
Estanislao and Cuisia’s recommendation? It would be insane to go back to the Marcos economy that has been by repudiated history. Lock the perpetrators and throw away the keys. Carlos Santayana resonates again: forget the past as if it did not happen, you will repeat it as if it did not happen.
“The decision to seek the presidency is audacious,” writes Bob Woodward, more known as the co-author of “All the President’s Men, the daring journalistic expose on the Watergate scandal in the United States that made Richard Nixon resign the presidency. A candidate is declaring himself fit and worthy, he says in his book ‘The Choice”.
Who among the six presidential aspirants for the 2022 polls meets the standard to a T?
One of them, according to a blind item spilled nonchalantly by President Duterte, is a drug user, scion of a well-known and rich family. He nearly drew the unnamed culprit perfectly. Another moist-eyed bet pocketed his excess political contributions, citing the absence of a law prohibiting such act. Another one is constantly dogged by questions on leadership by example, a latter- day enigma. Still another is criticized for giving away cash to people like nobody’s business, notwithstanding the rules against vote- buying.
A dyed-in-the wool Duterte ally, Albay Congressman Joey Salceda, an economist, has picked Robredo among the six because of her stand on good governance. Good governance, he said, is good for the economy, and ultimately, good for the nation. On top of that, Salceda singled out Robredo for having a clear record. By that, he meant, Robredo has the moral ascendancy over the rest.
Robredo has been the choice of many former and present leaders in the country for her moral rectitude and strong character. But , she’s still behind former Sen. Bongbong Marcos , based on surveys,with less than four months before the May 9 polls.
How fit and worth is Marcos Jr., aka BBM? No less than Robredo has the strongest word for him:” a liar”, for one, and “ one that cannot be relied upon during crisis.” Back in the 2016 vice presidential debate, Alan Peter Cayetano chided BBM for his alleged fake diploma from Oxford, a fact that BBM claims is genuine, notwithstanding copious testimonies to the contrary.
Then there’s his repeated glossy and glorious description of the country during martial law as ‘a golden age’. Estanislao and Cuisia have just debunked the myth, wholesale and bunk. His disqualification cases in the COMELEC,which have been recently junked, are marred by allegation by a retired commissioner of deliberate delay due to an interference by a sitting senator. He has been raked over the coals for his absence in two presidential interviews. While citing a journalist’s bias and conflict of schedules as the reasons, his blatant scarcity is believed by many as his way of avoiding tough questions about his father’s dubious legacy.
Obviously, he will sink or swim with that immovable, indifferent strategy. Right now, he’s swimming in a sea of supporters from north to south. If elected, what kind of a president will BBM be, apart from vowing to unite the country in still unclear and unspecific way? Part of his blotted resume is the official conviction in a court of law for not filing his income tax return for four years. Moral turpitude, the real issue, defines both crime and character.
Woodward’s caution in this regard is a matter of needling concern, if not deeply worrisome..
Presidential elections, Woodward concludes, are defining moments. In the final analysis, he says, it’s not about legislation or the role of government. It’s the man or woman voted into the office. They are a measuring points, he says ,for the country that call for a range of questions such as: who are we, what matters, where we are going?
In the public and private actions of the candidates are embedded their best answers, he decisively tells us.
