THE last two weeks have given us the rare spectacle of a sitting President working hard to stop the election of a vice presidential candidate. The vigor with which the President is pursuing this campaign leads us to wonder if he truly has the interest of the nation at heart, or if more primal forces of anger, hate and fear are at play.
During ceremonies to mark the 30th anniversary of the Edsa Revolution last month, President Aquino dredged up the sins of the late strongman, Ferdinand Marcos, and used these as a bludgeon to stop his son, Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr., from being elected vice president when the country goes to the polls in May.
The President has also mobilized his considerable media machinery to drive home the point that Senator Marcos is undeserving of election and that he must be stopped from winning higher office. At stake in this campaign, Mr. Aquino says, is no less than the future of democracy. Senator Marcos, he says, has been unrepentant and unapologetic—and therefore, dishonest.
Worse, he says, he could bring back martial law—as if the tendency to do this were somehow hereditary.
The President, it seemed, was convinced that the son should pay for the sins of the father, and was doomed to follow in his footsteps.
To his credit, the senator has largely shrugged off Mr. Aquino’s fevered attacks, except to say he was flattered by all the attention. Instead, he has kept his focus on problems that have beset the country in the last six years under Aquino’s inept administration and what needs to be done to address them. The possibility of martial law, he adds, is abhorrent, because that would mean the country was in crisis again.
We understand, of course, that President Aquino might still bear rancor toward the family he holds responsible for his father’s detention during martial law, and his subsequent assassination. On the other hand, Mr. Aquino’s family has had all the opportunity to right these perceived wrongs, after his mother, the late President Cory Aquino, rose to power in 1986 and stayed in office for six years on the strength of the Edsa Revolution that ousted President Marcos.
Mr. Aquino himself has also been in office almost six years now. If the Aquinos have been unable to gain satisfaction in their combined 12 years in power, perhaps the blame lies closer to home than with the Marcoses.
Coming as it does during his last month in office, President Aquino’s anti-Marcos campaign might also be seen as an act of self-preservation. After all, the ascendancy of a Marcos would be truly dangerous to him, if that Marcos turned out to be as vindictive as this president has been in his six years in office. Then the chickens would have truly come home to roost.