‘Two thousand one hundred and ninety. That’s how many days PBBM has to institute programs that will reform and or revitalize the country, helping its many underprivileged citizens achieve a better standard of living…’
CONGRATULATIONS to President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. (whom I will subsequently identify as PBBM) on his oath-taking yesterday. It must have given him a deep sense of satisfaction to be swearing the oath to the office that his beloved father held from 1965 to 1986, more so because that term came to such an unceremonious end. I am sure that satisfaction was in many ways felt as well by his mother and two sisters, who have had to live for nearly four decades with the memory of being ushered out of Malacanang and into the waiting military transport assets of a foreign power that was for so long a friend.
Now, that same foreign power has honored PBBM with a high-powered delegation representing US President Joe Biden, and soon, I am told, a new ambassador shall be assigned to Manila. It will be a fresh start – one of many, in many ways.
Two thousand one hundred and ninety. That’s how many days PBBM has to institute programs that will reform and or revitalize the country, helping its many underprivileged citizens achieve a better standard of living six years hence. For more than any president after his father, save perhaps Corazon Aquino, each of those 2190 days count, with not one being wasted.
The Marcos legacy is at stake.
I’ve said it previously in this same space: very rare is the opportunity being given to the descendant of a leader to redeem his name and legacy, especially one who suffered the same fate as did Ferdinand Marcos and his family. That legacy remains controversial to this day, and I can imagine that what eats at the lost rabid anti-Marcos partisans among the Filipino population is that the son now has a chance to help write a kinder new chapter of Philippine history.
But let’s face it: why it was Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and not someone else who raised his hand to swear to God to faithfully execute the laws of the land in the service of the Filipino people was in part a failing of the post-Marcos leaders who wanted to bury him and his memory six feet underground forever. They did not establish a record so sterling and so unblemished that generation after generation of Filipinos would truly embrace the yellow slogan, “Never again.” What the people witnessed, post Marcos I, was a politics that was more of the same, with corruption democratized, with family dynasties everywhere, with the poor getting poorer while the rich danced.
At the same time PBBM surely is aware that taking the oath of office is not a guarantee that his legacy is assured; it’s what he would have accomplished by the time his term ends that will matter. And to do well he will need so many things going for him, including luck.
As the late Singapore statesman Lee Kuan Yew (a contemporary of the elder Marcos) pointed out in an interview at Harvard University in 2000, he was able to stay in office until he himself chose to step down because, on the one hand, he was careful
not to commit a single peccadillo or live ostentatiously, and on the other he made sure he delivered, particularly in the areas of housing, healthcare and education.
Wise words for any new and future leader to live by, if you ask me.
Congratulations Mr. President, and good luck.
The clock is ticking.
