In politics, stupidity is a not a handicap, according to Napoleon Bonaparte. This apparently universal rule can help explain some phenomenon in politics, particularly the Philippine variety .
To start off, a former Philippine senator and world boxing icon, was widely criticized by well-known spin masters for capitalizing on it in his messaging in the recent senatorial race.
His buzz to the electorate: ibalik ang bobo sa Senado. Naturally, the electorate didn’t buy his feckless marketing pitch. Hence, the Pambansang Kamao lost big in the 2025 election. Now he’s off to the United States to prove something else: he will fight a boxing champ 16 years his junior and taller by easily five inches or more.
He must feel lucky and in a right mental frame this time to do that. Good luck.
Meantime, the first electoral protest for the 2025 elections was made in the City of San Fernando by a mayoralty challenger over a phenomenal result that needs some explanation. A phenomenon, in scientific terms, requires that it be adequately explained.
Otherwise ,it falls into a category of experience which usually happens when a person doesn’t get what he or she wanted. “If you prick us, do we not bleed,” asked Jew Shylock in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”. Besides, the British author Randy Pausch wrote ,an injured lion also wants to roar.
What is the controversial “pound of flesh” in the mayoralty priotest? It was statistically improbable, the challenger’s lawyer alleged. His client, after all, didn’t win a single precinct of the capital city’s 250 precincts or so.
The protest’s beef comes at a time when the COMELEC czar himself has announced to the whole world that the recent polls were the cleanest and fastest in the country’s history? Was he telling the truth, and nothing but, or is simply an optimist. An optimist is sometimes likened to one who falls out of the window of a 44th floor building and was heard saying as he passes the 18th floor, so far, so good.
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The mayoralty challenger wasn’t an ordinary candidate by any means. Her family has been in Pampanga’s politics for nearly two decades, Her mother and older brother were recently reelected to their new posts as governor and vice governor. She herself was a board member before she opted to run for mayor. People thought it was going to be a walk in the park.
As far as her camp is concerned, it made no sense, statistically, that she didn’t win a single precinct. Ergo, it equally made sense that the COMELEC should get to the bottom of it all, especially given the COMELEC’S newest bragging right.
Former San Fernando mayor and Third District congressman
Oscar Rodriguez has emerged from the archive and weighed in on the mayoralty back and forth. The challenger’s not being a true Fernandino could have been a real issue, despite her aggressive awareness campaign and the prominence of the family name.
It’s part of the political lore in Pampanga that the Fernandinos are intelligent voters. More to the point, they only elect local official from their own. That tradition probably kicked in among local voters, among other things. To be fair, there are those who were impressed by the challenger’s offer to serve as mayor. A prominent businessman even publicly announced his choice for the challenger. There are others who thought the challenger had the wherewithal as mayor.
For his part, perhaps, Rodriguez can cite himself an exception to the San Fernando lore. He is originally from Sta Ana but has proven himself worthy to be identified as a true Fernandino.
His stature as such grew bigger than life in the crucible of the Mt.Pinatubo calamity in the 90s that became an existential threat to the the capital town. More than his ability as a congressman or lawyer, Rodriguez made himself easily accessible and available like a doctor on call to the leaders of the Save San Fernando Movement.
In other words, he was at the beck and call in the collective effort to save the capital town from lahar that was then knocking at that town’s door. It is providential it that way. Rodriguez had literally earned it.
In his heyday, he almost became a political legend of sorts, especially when he was chosen as a prosecutor in the impeachment of then President Estrada. Legends die hard. He was later voted as an honorary woman by a women organization in San Fernando, first of its kind Pampanga.
No doubt , the political debacle of a Pineda candidate was a rejection. But it should not be considered a total repudiation or disrespect. There was a confluence of many factors; the political lore was only one of them.
Following this argument, the victory lopsidedly garnered by the incumbent mayor cannot be claimed as a total one. Perhaps,the pending political protest will reveal more on why the 2025 election in the capital city has gone the way it did, 12-0,
The German philosoper Arthur Schopenhauer said that it takes doctors to see human weakness, lawyers to see human wickedness, and theologians to see human stupidity. What will the COMELEC see in the election result of 2025 in San Fernando when all three challenges were believed to have widely influenced the national POLITICAL EXERCISE?
Sui generis?
