“We can only hope for the future of our country.”
If we can believe all that we are reading on social media and the many surveys conducted, one could say that the presidential election is all but over except for the proclamation. One survey has former Senator Bongbong Marcos with 60 per cent of those surveyed favoring him with all the others trailing far behind.
With a number of surveys already conducted and the results not varying by much, it is possible that the voters have already made up their minds on whom to vote for. If this is the case, the country will be having its first majority president since the 1992 elections. All our presidents since the election of former President Fidel V Ramos in 1992 were minority presidents including the current one.
I have had conversations with several political pundits and scanned all available literature in the vain attempt to find the reasons behind this phenomenon but I could not find any rational explanation. It seems that the people have simply decided to vote for BBM.
I wrote in a piece once that we Filipinos have the propensity to want to vote for children of presidents like Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Benigno Simeon Aquino lll to be our presidents. By the looks of it, this may be the only apparent reason why BBM may be elected to be our next president. This does not say much about our political maturity but as the say, the people are entitled to the kind of president they want.
There is however, still a long way to go before election day and anything can still happen. I also believe that as the election draws nearer, issues will become clearer and the contest will be a lot closer for the sake of a healthy democracy. As we can see, we are having a presidential campaign like no other. Not only is the pandemic wreaking havoc on an otherwise lively campaign but social media seems to have taken over and the candidate whose campaign is not technically savvy will be severely disadvantaged as we are already seeing.
We are also somehow seeing the classes of people supporting various candidates. But with the kind of lead BBM has, his support cuts through all classes with the rest splitting what is left. For example, many former high ranking public officials who served previous presidents have come out endorsing VP Leni Robredo. The business sector also appears to be endorsing her. The ABC classes and cause oriented groups are the pillars of VP Robredo’s support. But so are the other candidates like Senator Ping Lacson and Mayor Isko “Moreno” Demagoso with the possible exception of Senator Many Pacquiao who will probably draw support from the D and Es.
For myself, I have a couple of questions that I would like to ask which apparently even some of the candidates never asked or raised during some of the debates. Given that the battle cry of BBM is unity which is great if it can be achieved, I would like to see the BBM campaign come out and explain how BBM intends to unify a divided Filipino society.
The other question that comes to mind is about national security. The year before the late President Ferdinand Marcos left office, the strength of the CPP/NPA was about 27,000 armed combatants and were scattered throughout the country. Since then, the government was able to reduce the number drastically. The current CPP/NPA strength if I am not mistaken is now fewer than 4,000 and control very few areas that the Armed Forces is now confident that their end is not that far away.
Will a BBM presidency resurrect the CPP/NPA to its strength in 1985-86? It is essential that the BBM campaign addressed this very important issue because it is something that cannot be ignored considering that the AFP is shifting its focus to external territorial threats due mainly to the issues in the West Philippine Sea.
It would be a pity if the AFP diverts meager government resources to deal with a resurgent CPP/NPA. If this happens, it will be the poor who will bear the brunt of the hardships as they did more than a generation ago. Maybe BBM’s campaign leaders are feeling very confident and believe that the election is already won and do not feel that they have to wade into controversial issues like the way they are ignoring joint debates. I would advise against this attitude because it takes a very short time for people to turn against a candidate as what happened in the 2016 elections. With the stakes being so high, we can only hope that for the sake of the future of our country, people will use their brains to vote instead of their emotions.