Testing the mettle of ‘presidentiables’
The "trapos" and their apologists are back to peddling counterfeit goods with their call to ignore the jockeying for a place in the starting line in the 2010 race. The country has yet to recover from the stresses of the May elections. The country faces formidable challenges. The nation – and the political institutions – should, therefore, take a much-needed vacation from politics and buckle down to work, they said.What they actually mean is for the people to let their guard down and leave politics to the exclusive province of the politicians.
In this distorted view of politics, people’s participation is limited to going to the polling places every three years, no matter if the choice is limited to Tweedledum and Tweedledee foisted on the voters by the same power blocks hiding under the guise of political parties. In the meantime, the pols should be allowed to decide the people’s fate I in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms.
Take the current battle for the leadership of the Senate. Manuel Villar was elected Senate president on the strength of a mongrel coalition of nine administration, three opposition and two independent senators. This early, plots are brewing for a coup within the nine-man administration bloc in the majority and the eight-man opposition which forms the minority.
The instability has been attributed to the presidential ambition of some senators. That may explain why this or that senator personally wants Villar out. But it glosses over the real political divisions within the chamber. The people have decisively voted for a Senate that would serve to check the administration’s unbridled greed for power and pelf. They see their hopes dashed in the emergence of a majority built around the core of pro-Arroyo senators.
If some senators are exploiting this uneasiness over the majority coalition to advance their presidential ambition, we see this as a beneficial narrowing of the focus of political discourse. The issue is Gloria Arroyo. The elections of 2010 will determine whether the nation can decisxively cast off her legacy of lying, cheating and thieving.
This early, those who have presidential ambitions should come out clearly on where they stand on this fundamental issue. There is no room for opportunists waiting to see which way the wind blows.
So let’s test the mettle of these "presidentiables" starting here and now. Let’s hear from Villar, Mar Roxas, Loren Legarda, Ping Lacson, Dick Gordon and Noli de Castro (have we left out anybody?) on what they can offer the nation. They have three years to tell us.
If they say they are too busy doing their job to talk about 2010, they’re no different from Gloria.
We have had enough of Gloria who keeps spouting the nonsense that she’s too busy growing the economy she cannot be distracted by the pesky "political" questions of why people are going hungry, unsafe in their homes and in the streets and fearfully uncertain of their future.
