SHORT OF making the official declaration, former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., has the unmistakable body language of someone deeply yearning to go back to a familiar, sacred ground, once heavily stained by the heady power and immoderate greed of a conjugal dictatorship.
In his latest attempt at historical revisionism, the son of the former dictator, exuded a nostalgia of youth, innocence and inspiration of years gone by, seemingly untouched, even insensitive to or insensitized by, the original sin of the dictator.
The guesting on Toni Gonzaga’s show sparked a public debate in a mixed Western and Asian atmosphere ,where democratic space allows the exercise of the freedom of speech, encourages forgiveness,if not forgetfulness as a political or moral salve. On the other hand, the cultural sense of moral shame demands that it can only be extinguished in some meaningful gesture beyond a mere apology. The sublime paralytic Apolinario Mabini eloquently expressed this when he said that for Emilio Aguinaldo to redeem himself after the assassination of Andres Bonifacio, he must die in a battle.
“In a one man, one vote system,“ noted the former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew,’ name recall is an advantage. Bongbong is acutely aware of this. “It is his only bankable political asset,” according to Tony Lavina, dean of Ateneo.“ But it is also his big political liability,” he warned.
Against the fast-rising Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, Lavina believes Bongbong will lose.
For Moreno has, thus far, captured the people’s imagination more than any presidential bets in sight with his simple, consistent, even anodyne, messaging. His recent televised political ad was not even an original concept. It was obviously borrowed from a popular French public outcry ‘ Je suis Charlie’, after the terrorist attack on the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The slogan was morped into an extension of the public’s identifying with and supporting the victims of the attack.
That’s Moreno’s, or his messaging advisers’ intelligent bulb. No wrong in copying. If the shoe fits, wear it. Moreno also adheres to the truism that politics is addition. It doesn’t matter what the color of the cat is, China’s Deng Shiao Ping once said, as long as it catches mice. So Moreno, or Isko, stays away from the opposition label conveniently, out of harm’s way. He has also safely distanced from the Duterte Administration, though throwing a few criticisms here and there for optic and acoustic effects, especially on how the pandemic is managed or mishandled, but just about. In short, he is politically colorless.
This political strategy is relevant and instructive in this time of social media and, yes Virginia, farms of troll in the political terrains that threaten dangerously like minefields. Don’t fight them, don’t make them work. Just win them over by making them say “I am Isko”. It’s not a political statement; it’s a personal one, and doesn’t antagonize the political color that suits you. It’s to hard resist or not difficult to imbibe. It can even serve as a breathing exercise. It’s almost messianic, and messiahs thrive in difficult times like the pandemic. Well, it helps that he has the celebrity personality. It’s practical.
But there is another real problem: Vice President Leni Robredo. She defeated him fair and square in the last vice presidential race,although he’s still in denial after a final word from the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, and even vowed to beat her in the presidential race. But he needs something more to do that: another name with a high recall value,Sara Duterte. Again, the Solid North and Sara South doctrine.
Will La Vina’s name liability still apply, if and when the team up, is signed and delivered? Both names carry the repulsive scent of dictatorship.
If it happens, President Duterte will have to withdraw his vice presidential bid, which is facing Constitutional challenge, anyway, and his political ruse will be amply displayed for what it really was: a simple deception. “Never attempt to win by force what you can win by deception,” Machiavelli said.
Apparently, Robredo views a Bongbong-Sara tandem will be a strong team. That may partly explain why she’ s still undecided, unwavering in her conviction that a unified opposition is what is needed to beat any administration team. She may have the most realistic view of the political situation. That could mean not necessarily having her as the presidential candidate, more a patriotic, self-less stance than a political perspective. Besides, she’s still low in the surveys, and no statement or slogan can’t seem to move the needle. She may be the best one but she needs to convince the voters that she’s the One.
Sen. Manny Pacquiao, who has been dethroned in boxing and in the PDP-Laban headed now by President Duterte, may have a chance, but is still groping for the right slogan that can make his presidential bid tick. Fighting for the poor and eliminating corruption are old mantras, as old as politics. In the modern world, a real deal should shape the debate, like what he did in the boxing world a decade or so ago. Politics is a different contact sports, and wisdom doesn’t lie in the size of the fists or speed of the feet. Besides, his former idol and mentor used the same mantra and proven a lie, especially in the pandemic. Ask Sen. Richard Gordon and company.
Sen. Ping Lacson’s approach is conventional, nothing creative, as factual as it can get. He presents himself honestly as the ‘General of the People’. The idea of a generalship may not be as effective, after two draconian presidencies with emphasis on the use of the military and the police in a supposed to be civilian governance. The idea of the use of force, or violence, still resonate in the mind of most people. Besides, Lacson has the shadow of the past, even the present, still following him.
Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, an unabashedly unmoved follower of Duterte, has vowed to run for president just to be able to face Pacquiao in a public debate which the latter has refused to accept. It’s the least noble and edifying reason for running for a public office. But as the late Gov. Bren Z. Guiao used to say, anyone can make a fool of himself in a democracy. And there are also false prophets, wolves in sheep’s clothing, both in religion and politics.
It’s their season.
