Ten months and a week from the next presidential elections, politicians are already bickering, even within the ruling party.
Indeed, the rift has widened between President Duterte, chairman of the ruling PDP-Laban, and its acting president, the boxing senator Manny Pacquiao, to a point that one party veteran warns of an implosion over which candidate will be the standard bearer in 2022.
On Tuesday, Pacquiao accepted Duterte’s challenge to identify corrupt government agencies or lose the President’s endorsement next year.
The President had slammed Pacquiao, his partymate and erstwhile ally, for saying the Duterte administration was three times more corrupt than the previous government led by the late President Benigno Aquino III.
“So, I am challenging him: Point (out to me) those offices that are corrupt. And let me take care of it. Within one week, I will do something,” said Duterte Monday night.
But in boxing terms, the President left himself wide open for a well-placed punch from the pugilist senator, who identified the much maligned Department of Health (DOH), which has been dogged by allegations of corruption and mismanagement, particularly in the way it has dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the operations of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.
To date, the President has refused to entertain these allegations, particularly those against Health Secretary Francisco Duque III who seems to enjoy immunity from official sanction.
Moreover, the President’s boast that he will act within one week is bereft of a single shred of credibility, coming from the politician who failed spectacularly to keep his campaign promise to eradicate the drug problem and official corruption in his first six months in office.
While these two gentlemen quarrel in public, sycophants who are only interested in maintaining their influence continue to push the President’s daughter, the mayor of Davao City, to run for president, as if her managerial skills to govern 1.63 million can be magically scaled up to manage 108.1 million Filipinos.
At the same time, a senator whose main qualification is his closeness to the President, is busy protesting his inclusion in a shortlist of possible candidates for president—even though Mr. Duterte declared in Dumaguete last month that the senator was indeed interested in the country’s top post.
On the other side of the political fence, those who would run against the administration candidate seem far from united, a state of affairs that works in the ruling party’s favor.
Can we really do no better than the same, tired names that are being force-fed to us? Is there, among 108 million Filipinos, nobody better qualified to lead the nation? Surely we deserve better.