‘Yes, the deep divisions in our country today are not the fault of one man or of one era. They are the fault of a succession of leaders unable — or unwilling to transcend the call of politics to become the statesmen the country needed.’
WHOEVER is elected President in May and takes the oath of office end of June will have a huge task ahead of him — or her.
Ours is a nation that is deeply divided. The question is, will the next President be up to the task? And will the losing side of the political debate be open to the idea of, at the very least, a truce?
More than seeing my preferred candidate lose in May, what I fear most is that the divisions in the country that were exposed over 30 years ago and which were never bridged will become so deep that we will be a country perpetually ungovernable. Each side of the divide will be characterized by extremist positions — unwilling and unable even just to sit down and listen, motivated by vengeance, propelled by distrust, and fueled by fear.
The discourse that you run head-on into social media is a discourse that does not augur well for the future. It is angry. It is laden with insults. It is absolutist. The other side is fully to blame for the state that we are in, while we are blameless and squeaky clean.
But to me, the more dangerous flavor of the arguments you see is that which casts one side as evil. Because when you do so, how can you compromise? How can you find middle ground? How can you do nothing else but everything you can to exterminate the other side?
Humankind has seen so much grief because differences have been cast in this light of good vs evil. And not just political, mind you; even religious divides have caused so much anguish because one side claims to be the good side and the other is cast as the evil side and why indeed should you not exert every effort to stamp out the evil?
After May 9, we will have a nation to heal. Can our candidates do it?
It does not follow that a President who wins by a mere plurality inevitably presides over a fractured nation. Fidel V. Ramos, in 1992, despite allegations of electoral thievery by Miriam Santiago, managed to bring together a raucous country and move forward. Ramos was hobbled further by the fact that he was the first Protestant president in a nation with the largest Asian population baptized as Catholic but with pagan values (hahaha). Yet by his personality and drive and his conscious effort to be a President for all, Ramos (at least in his first four years in office) was able to get much of the Philippines moving together with some amount of harmony. Until, as is often the case, people around him started fiddling with the idea of remaining in power beyond the Constitutional mandate — which Ramos did not do anything to stop – and PIRMA was born.
By the time he stopped down from office, however, FVR could not get his chosen successor elected president in the face of the massive popularity of his vice president. The story of Erap Estrada tells us that it does not follow that a president who is elected with a huge mandate can preside over and heal a fractured nation — especially if the leader thinks the huge mandate empowers him to gamble away the future of his Presidency — if not of the country.
It went downhill from there.
The divisions in our country today are divisions exposed by EDSA 1, made worse by EDSA 2, deepened by EDSA 3, and blithely ignored during the Aquino years. I use the word blithely because it seemed to me that those around the late President felt that it was just natural for every Filipino to realize how the Aquino years were the epitome of good government, and that when you had a decent man in Malacanang everything else would follow. Wasn’t the slogan of the day “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap?”
But clearly, that wasn’t the case, because eliminating corruption and poverty isn’t as simple as coining a neat campaign slogan. So, what happened as a result? People were left with the conclusion that even if you had a decent man in Malacanang, things on the ground stayed the same.
So, the next time they had to choose, the majority didn’t care so much about decency.
Haha.
Yes, the deep divisions in our country today are not the fault of one man or of one era.
They are the fault of a succession of leaders unable — or unwilling — to transcend the call of politics to become the statesmen the country needed. Most of them kept an eye on the future, not so much in terms of what it would hold for the rest of us, but in terms of what it would hold for them; a number of them, in fact, feared that at the end of the rainbow was not a pot of gold, but gaol. Motivated thus to stay out of jail, every succeeding move was taken towards that end.
For the ordinary Filipino, it meant alienation from the idea that government existed to serve his — the public’s — interests. They watched, feeling powerless, as government became the means by which even those who claimed to be free of corruption did what they could to feather their nest while accusing others of corruption. (To paraphrase a Catholic bishop’s excuse for cheating in elections, “everyone becomes corrupt anyway.”)
And so here we are, a nation torn apart by warring factions capitalizing on a people similarly divided and sometimes grasping at straws, desperately wanting to still believe in the promises they hear every three or six years even though, time and again, all they end up with is disappointment, frustration, and heartache.
If elected, will Ferdinand Marcos Jr. have what it takes to heal the nation? Can Leni Robredo do it? Will it take the character of a Ping Lacson? The folk appeal of a Pacman or a Ka Leody? Or the movie star looks of an Isko?
And will those who lose in the elections be willing to trust the winner?
We have a nation to heal. And failure is not an option.
