by Ben Serrano
February 3, 2009
The column tells why not Richard Gordon for president? A man that was the toast of the town almost two decades ago when he transformed Subic Bay into a showcase of what the Filipino can do once he sets his mind to it.
Austero in his column claimed (and I quote in verbatim Austero’s column) “Why then is Richard Gordon not being considered seriously as Presidential timber? The answer dawned on me during the last twenty minutes of his address last week and it was a disheartening realization as it is a reflection of the state of the maturity of our voting population.
Gordon is not out there as a frontrunner in the presidential derby because he doesn’t seem to have the billions required to finance an expensive presidential campaign; or if he does, he knows only too well that he would have to recover the “investment” one way or the other, most likely through shady deals, if and when he gets elected into office.
He is not a front-runner because he is a stickler for discipline and the rule of law, unlike other politicians who have no compunctions about campaigning early and already spending hundreds of millions in television ads a good year and a half before the actual elections.
In a brazen display of self-importance, Bayani Fernando has decorated our major thoroughfares with giant tarpaulins of his grim visage, in the process assaulting millions of Filipinos everyday. Wherever he goes, he has a brigade of pink-shirted men and women distributing campaign materials.
Senators Manny Villar and Mar Roxas have been campaigning hard since last year. They have upped the ante by producing slick television advertisements that extol themselves as the panacea for our country’s many ills.
While it can be argued that Villar and Roxas are wealthy individuals who are supposedly—although this is met with well-deserved skepticism—spending their own money, they are clearly violating electoral laws by launching their campaigns very early on. Pray tell, what kind of message are Villar and Roxas sending? That they are above the law? “.
Well, you hit the head of the nail right Bong!
My take is, Filipino voters are a unique breed, a sort of very different kind of voters (some say a distorted practitioner of democratic ideals).
This happened because since time immemorial our political leaders have exploited that weakness. Wanton poverty that behooves Juan De la Cruz for decades has viciously come over and over again as if we never learned lessons and forget out tragic experiences from the hands of our greedy politicians!
Ideally, local political leaders are supposed to empower us poor Filipinos intellectually, morally and financially. But local politicians give us wrong signals ergo almost all poor Filipino voters are becoming dependent to wealthy, rich politicians who is actually making politics a business proposition rather than a tool of empowerment.
I have covered six elections in a row here in Caraga Region and money has always been the determining factor of winning victories after victories. Here in Caraga Region, it is actually color coding, it’s like birds of same feathers attract each other or you scratch mine and I’ll scratch yours syndrome. Do we see changes in the 2010 national election?
Nope, it’s all the same and because poverty continues and even getting worst due to economic crisis it will all be the same or even worst has yet to come.
Comelec officially said that as of the October 29, 2007 barangay elections, Caraga Region has a total 1,308,076 registered voters. Traditionally you divide that into ten ruling families of political dynasties all over the region including solid INC religious vote.
I have been going around lately and talked to many people as I can and this is my observation.
There are more New People’s Army sympathizers now than before. Some rural folk would stick to the communist propaganda thinking it is serving them better and that they have better deal on it than inutile government institutions whose personnel won’t even pay them a visit especially those living in far-flung areas. The NPA rebels pictured themselves as the true soldiers of the people and in the countryside they have been successful in that propaganda.
The military will of course debate you on that but as the saying goes the proof of the eating is in the eating itself. You can see that in the way the NPA rebels attack municipal police stations, bombed Globe cell site facilities across the regions these days and in the past. tsk tsk tsk.
During an NPA lightning raid at a rubber plantation in Bayugan City In Agusan del Sur last year where at least 13 high-powered firearms were snatched by the rebels at broad daylight from the rubber plantations security guards. They even made a monstrous traffic at the national highway and almost sari-sari stores moments before the attack closes shop.
I happened to ask this to former Army Chief of Staff then OPAPP Secretary Hermogenes Esperon during a press conference that while the government is paying hard earned taxpayers’ money to rebel returnees at P50T to P60T each for returned armalite rifles, illegal loggers in Caraga Region in returned are giving firearms and ammunitions to the rebels. And Agusan del Sur vice Governor Santi Cane for the record agree with my observations during the press con.
Thus, I believe the New People’s Army’s decades old campaign for a fee (an income generating project) proliferates more than ever as it is in the previous elections wherein candidates locally or nationally had to seek permission from the local rebels particularly rural areas where it is their stronghold.
As they are saying, a presidential candidate who wanted a pie of the 1.3-M registered voters in Caraga Region (very minimal in fact registered voters in Caraga Region combined is just like a district in Metro Manila) you only needed to talk to four groups; One, the political dynasty families and their cohorts, two, the local New People’s Army, three, the Iglesia Ni Cristo votes (which is actually very minimal but solid) and four, the COMELEC.
Lastly, I agree with Bong Austero in his column, when he said, “Gordon is not a front-runner because we are a people who don’t like leaders who tell us sobering truths. We prefer leaders that entertain, make politically- incorrect and sexist jokes, make promises that cannot be implemented anyway, and in general, make band-aid solutions to major problems that require surgery and chemotherapy.
We certainly don’t like candidates who tell us unequivocally that we are all part of the solution, that our problems are best solved if we all practice good citizenship and do our bit in making this country work. Thanks but no thanks but we’d rather have candidates who fancy themselves as in possession of superhuman powers that they can solve our problems all by their lonesome selves.
To all of these I say AMEN.
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