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Thursday, March 28, 2024

What the next president should be

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"What our country needs badly today is a brilliant political architect, a wizened diplomat, a wizard in economic equations, and a dignified leader whose reputation is untarnished and unassailable."

This early and for the next 18 months, the people’s abiding interest will be on the presidential elections in May 2022.

Filipinos will have to make a crucial and critical decision on who they want to be the next president of the country.

They will not just be choosing a successor to President Rodrigo Duterte. The next president will be confronted with the gravest and most harrowing crisis in Philippine history.

The devastation wrought by the pandemic on the national economy has become unbearable and unquantifiable. An economic recession has set in; our economy is as insolvent as it was in 1946, at the end of World War II.

Millions have lost their jobs. Many families are having difficulty meeting their basic needs; livelihood opportunities are hardly available. Some are already experiencing hunger and deprivation.

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Most of our business establishments suffered enormous losses; some had to close down.

The national treasury is empty. The country is heavily in debt. It will continue to borrow more money to finance economic recovery programs and the cost of securing immunity from the deadly virus.

What is ironic is that the only way anyone can dodge infection is by itself depressing; inactivity and isolation. It is almost like awaiting death with resignation.

What will compound and aggravate the crisis are the problems which continue to bedevil the Duterte administration. Graft and corruption had become even more pervasive and widespread. The Philippines is now the fourth most corrupt country in the world.

President Duterte, on a number of occasions, admitted failure in his war against the drug menace and against rampant corruption.

The next president will be presiding over an impoverished and morally exhausted nation.

It is going to be difficult for a voter to choose which candidate deserves best his vote. No one among those known aspirants for the presidency enjoys a clear moral or political ascendancy as to be beyond the reach of the others. No one stands taller than the rest in terms of national eminence and stature.

Like most of our previous presidents, PRRD has not shown clear indications as to whom he wants to succeed him.

While he has been subtly building up Senator Bong Go, the President has not completely discounted his daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, as an alternative. There is also the possible support for Senator Manny Pacquiao.

The presidential derby in 2022 will be an open, free-for-for-all and all-for-one bruising contest among three, four or five wannabes whose only common denominators are audacity and hubris.

If Presiden Duterte picks Bong Go, Sara may no longer participate. Pacquiao may still run or politely leave the scene.

Whoever is sponsored by the president will enhance his or her chances of winning. The president is still widely popular. The problem is that popularity is not a transferable asset.

The Liberal Party is expected to field Vice President Leni Robredo as the principal opposition candidate. She might get the support of most of the other political parties critical of the incumbent administration and some of the rich families whom the President has alienated.

Also eyeing the highest position is Senator Ping Lacson. The possibility of his being endorsed either by Duterte or by the opposition groups is remote but not improbable.

Constantly talked about in political circles is the possibility of Bongbong Marcos joining the race. The former senator, who insists he won the vice presidency in the 2016 elections, seems determined to regain the prestige of his family’s name. In this country, the sins of the father hardly visit his children.

One name which has surfaced but not yet widely heard is that of Manila Mayor Isko Moreno. His resounding victory over Erap Estrada and Fred Lim in the last mayoralty race gained him national attention. The former movie personality could be the choice of most of the millennials and the youth. He might pull another Duterte-like Houdini in the presidential rigmarole.

There has been a clamor for highly successful and wealthy individuals, particularly leaders of the business community, to run for the presidency of the biggest corporation of the country as a matter of noble obligation. Most of them have shied away from politics. They do contribute substantial amounts to candidates, usually to all the contenders, to gain the goodwill of whoever wins.

Real estate tycoon Manny Villar ventured into the presidency and lost because the stars and the heavens shone on Benigno Aquino III and not on him. He had since recovered his campaign expenses and made himself richer.

One of the richest men today whose name has been whispered in political circles and in the business community as a possible contender for the presidency is Ramon Ang, the top honcho of the giant San Miguel Corporation. His entry into the presidential race would be a welcome and significant political vaccine since politics in the country has long been as infectious as COVID-19.

The mandate for the electorate is clear: They have to install in Malacanang someone capable of overcoming the tremendous challenges confronting the country at the end of Duterte’s presidency.

What makes the election of a competent president an urgent necessity is the grim reality that the country is suffering from a disease even deadlier than COVID-19 – moral bankruptcy.

The electorate should exercise due diligence in their choice of the next president. They should perhaps draw lessons from the dismal performances of past presidents of the country.

The Philippines could have been the first progressive Republic in Asia had Emilio Aguinaldo forced the surrender of the only remaining seat of the Spanish colonial administration in Intramuros. Later, he should have gone to the United States to prevent the ratification, in the US Senate, of the Treaty of Paris, in 1898.

This was the most scandalous, condemnable and shameless slave trade Uncle Sam ever entered into with another country. The decrepit king of Spain sold the 10 million Filipinos to the USA for only $2 per head in spite of the fact that the colonial government no longer existed and the Republic of the Philippines had earlier been proclaimed.

President William McKinley, who didn’t even know where the Philippine islands were located, made our country America’s trade and security outpost in Asia and the Far East.

We could have regained our independence earlier had Quezon not rejected the Hare Haws Cutting Bill just because he did not want Osmeña to get the honor and the credit. He could have spared our country from four years of Japanese occupation had he insisted on making the Philippines a neutral zone in the Asian theater.

It was the American farmers who called on their representatives in Congress to set us free, wary over the incursion of Filipinos into the vineyards of San Francisco and into the pineapple plantations in Hawaii during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The Philippines could have become a very rich country had it not been abandoned by General Arthur MacArthur who rebuilt Japan instead of the country he promised to return to. He did return but left to make himself an American Emperor in Japan.

Most of our past presidents after Edsa I were more interested in remaining in office than in serving the people. Graft and corruption attended most of the last five or six administrations.

Since our political institutions are in disrepair, our economy has been ravaged, and our moral backbone has been broken, the entire nation has to be reinvented.

What our country needs badly today is a brilliant political architect, a wizened diplomat, a wizard in economic equations, and a dignified leader whose reputation is untarnished and unassailable.

Who among the known aspirants measure up to these attributes and qualify for the position?

Whoever is chosen can endeavor to meet the presidential prescription. Most of the requirements are attainable.

The highest and most demanding academic credentials are available. What is not readily obtainable is character.

It is inborn and intrinsic. Love, empathy, joy and happiness spring from one’s heart, from the soul.

Anger, revenge, disgust, enmity, and rage are mental aberrations.

The next president need not be a philosopher king or a genius. He must be just a humble human being with a big heart and a deeply loving soul.

A leader who has a deep and abiding love for his people is what our country needs at this critical hour. If he is true to his people, he must be even more faithful and true to himself, to his own soul.

It appears so simple after all: The only virtue the next president should have is honesty.

Mr. Ernesto Banawis is a student of history, politics and government.

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