‘And it’s what we should ask the aspirants – why you? What have you got to offer? What do you think is our biggest issue or issues and how do you propose to deal with them?’
YESTERDAY, I espied a social media post broadcasting the most liked (respected? Maybe not) senators in the Philippines. And they were Hontiveros (her number was 40%), Tulfo (46%) and Alan Cayetano (41%).
Why this was put out and why that question was asked in the first place escapes me, unless it’s all part of the groundwork that is already being laid by various groups for purposes of the 2028 national elections.
A sizable portion of the Philippine electorate believes that the presidency is “in the bag” for Vice President Sara Duterte, citing the sizable public sympathy for the former President, who languishes in a foreign jail sans the comfort that Philippine jails provide for VIPs. The outpouring of support for DU30 that some see in the results of the 2025 Senatorial elections, people say, bodes well for the Sara for President movement.
But, as politics goes anywhere in the world, at this point, such a pronouncement is premature. Many things can happen in between, such as the publication of all the evidence that will be submitted to the impeachment court. And there is talk that the impeachment process can easily turn into a “second envelope” scenario – the scenario that effectively destroyed the presidency of Erap – and that this “second envelope” scenario can bring down any hopes of a Sara presidency. But again, all this is just talk and we won’t know the truth unless the impeachment court agrees that the public deserves to know the truth.
Even my own very unscientific survey of random people (26 now, all in all) seems to project a different scenario. My unscientific (let’s call it Impulse Asia) survey is a simple question: were elections to be held today and you only had two choices, who would you vote for: Sara or Bong Go?
Of the 26, one from Metro Manila insisted that he would rather kill himself. Three others (from Davao!!!) said they’d rather kill themselves, too, but if forced to choose, they will choose the same candidate. So, of the 25 who finally decided to choose, a whopping seven – yes, seven – chose Sara. And eighteen (18) went for Bong Go.
Notably for Bong Go were the three from Davao, as well as three women (two from Mindanao, one of whom was from GenSan). What made Bong Go the preferred choice? My Grab driver in Cebu had a simple answer: “Malasakit.” One of the women had a very woman’s answer: “I am emotional. I don’t want someone emotional to be president”.
So, am I saying it’s going to be Bong Go? Far from it, though I know several pro-Duterte.
Instead, what I’m saying is if we keep asking “sino” or “who,” then we are asking the same question, as we have been again and again and again. It shouldn’t be who, but why. Why should it be this or that person?
And it’s what we should ask the aspirants – why you? What have you got to offer? What do you think is our biggest issue or issues and how do you propose to deal with them?
And then, if they have been in public office for some time, we scrutinize their record to see if in the past they had done something, anything, to demonstrate their consistency in belief and principle. Or if they have done nothing to date but flutter from this to that as political butterflies do to survive.
The question is not “who.”
It should be “why.”
