The not-so-new kid on the block hasn’t changed his mind. He thinks our real problem isn’t about spice but spite. So, the 17th president of a republic , and the second Marcos in Malacanang after a generation, once put down as a country of 35 million nincompoops led by one s.o.b, is firm about three solutions: unity, unity, unity.
It was his presidential dominant campaign message. It’s his consistent ,resonant call for 2023. You can’t argue against success. He won the presidency on the basis of the statistically puzzling decision of allegedly more than P31 million Filipinos. On second thought, if his call for unity was correctly understood, perhaps he would not have won the presidency — owned not once but twice by his late father who later on stood democracy on its head.
But there goes history and its stupidity , or the rest of it. How did he do it?
American Nobel Prize winner author John Steinbeck gives a little help. “You know most people live 90 per cent in the past, 7 per cent in the present and leaves them 3 percent for the future,” he wrote in“ The winter of our discontent.” Was there really a golden age when a kilo of rice could be bought for P20 as Marcos recalls with a sepia glow? Marcos probably factored in Steinbeck’ averages in his political calculus, although former NEDA chief Solita Monsod,his former private tutor in economics, had expressed doubt about his student..
Many Filipinos, for one reason or another, must have bought into his legend about the past or the massive ignorance about the not-so-legendary dark past under the dictator. Life is an onion, according to a sage, with layers covering one lie after another. Ignorance is bliss and optimism must be its flipside.
With or without onion, many are crying rivers over the price and supply crises of agri- products in the country,inspite of the surveyed optimism. Things will get better before they get worse. Marcos Jr. chimes in. So far, not so good. Government has yet to pull a miracle to bring down inflation and make life a little easier for those in the so-called “laylayan”.
Forget about the state of the onion, which as of late is supposed to be sold at P260 per kilo. A day before Christmas, my wife sent the helper to nearby tiangge for the pricey spice, and she came back with 10 pieces of red globes for P220 or P22 per bulb.. At this price, the onion farmers must be enjoying a windfall, or the importers or some people in between. They’re called middlemen or some high-level government officials, probably one and the same .
The state of the onion is emblematic of the state of the governance. Fuel and food prices, fares and fees have gone above sea level, including intelligence funds, while sanity and intelligence remain below sea level. Only a few people, which the President’s mother once described as smarter than others are laughing all the way to the bank.
In any case, unity and more of it is bruited about as the key to surviving what lies ahead in the year upon us. To his credit, Marcos’ call is not only local, but universal. The world can hurdle what is ahead if it pursues the unity. Not a bad message,and certainly not irrelevant to a world knocked down for so long by the pandemic and sent reeling anew by Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.There’s no mistaking about it: he is the rising leader of the poor but developing world, emerging from the woodwork, as it were. Obviously, his charm offensive is on.
In that role, Marcos’ is now off to China to woo Xi Ping along his advocacy in light of the growing tension in the South China Sea on account of his aggressive actions to get back Taiwan, geographically or ideologically, into the red fold, and bolster its fictitious territorial claim in the West Philippine Sea. He is likely to explain in the best diplomatic terms possible what he meant when he told US President Joe Biden he could not see the future without the Americans’ on his side.
Good luck, kampai and an 18- dinner course. On the other hand….
Unless China promises cheaper onions and a complete stop to the flagrant harassment of Filipino fishermen by Chinese fishermen and Chinese militias, PBBM will come back home to his people bellyaching with the same problems he left behind for a while: ‘golden’ onions and imported galunggong. There’s also another thing on the radar : the President is putting himself at risk of bringing home the stubborn COVID virus that is threatening to upset China’s hardline policy on dissent and the traditional order.
Will he bring home the proverbial bacon and not the protean virus? Or will Filipinos still cry rivers over the price of onion as the Jews of the ancient times did over the lack of it after being freed from slavery in Egypt and found no onions on the way to the promised land?
PBBM, in a way, freed Filipinos from the abuses, incompetence and corruption of the previous administration. It’s still a long way to go before he can make people stop crying over his predecessor’s dubious legacy and enjoying his own version of promised land where rice costs P20 per kilo, onions can be had at a much lower price if not for free as in the old days , and Maharlika isn’t just a convenient ruse for political, if not financial, gain.
The future is part and parcel of the uncertain onion we peel that can make you cry, or perhaps laugh.
