The Lesser Evil

We were once placed under a special system of governance in order to contain the growing restiveness of the people. For a sense of order to be maintained in the country, some civil liberties were suspended.

I was in my early teens during Martial Law, and I liked it. There was discipline in the land. The nights then were quiet and peaceful: no screeching of drag racing cars on the streets, no noisy drunks daring the world to a duel, no drug addicts preying on neighbors’ belongings. The days beamed with good public behavior.

The system worked, but only for a time. Its ugly side soon began to show. The very authorities tasked with preventing abuses by the general citizenry were themselves becoming abusive. The new order turned out to be much worse than the one it wanted to correct. The medicine intended to cure the sick nation eventually lost its efficacy; the national malady itself had developed resistance to it.

And so the country reverted back to its old ways. The politicians became trickier and more cunning than ever.

These last few months the political scene in the country has been very active again. Politicians once again promise to deliver us from evil, to bring peace and prosperity for all. But past experience has made us cynical about all these. If these are not outright lies, these are simply entertainment productions for voters.

It seems the national interest is just an initial infatuation of the presidency. An elected president cannot cease being a parent, spouse or friend once installed in office. First of all, the president cannot cease being a politician, despite the next elections being yet many years away.

The presidency, as we know it, naturally engages in politicking – feeding the interests of the president’s own political party, laming the political opposition, while, at the same time, wooing the goodwill of a cynical, badly divided nation. The president eats politics for breakfast. It may not be a palatable meal but the president has to take it. That’s his antidote for venom; the high office is a pit of snakes.

It’s a shame how dirty politics flourishes in a country where, at best, it would take a perfect president 30 years or so to clear the government of various deeply entrenched problems. Dirty politics thrives because the citizenry allows it, and because the very people who criticize the defects of the present order are the very ones most liable to perpetuate it when placed in power.

As far as I can remember, there has not been a president in our recent history that was not, at one time or another, been charged of having lost the trust and confidence of the people. Perhaps, this is symptomatic of something far worse than it seems – perhaps we Filipinos have lost our faith in government. If so, then no president will ever be good enough.

Any president will always be short of the measure of his critics, meaning defeated presidential aspirants or, for that matter, anyone drooling over the top executive office. To these people, the motivation behind every presidential actuation is dubious. Their public utterances tend to claim infallible certainty that no president is ever truly sincere to his sworn duty to the nation.

They should know; they’re all of the same kind. Ironically, every one of them swears he is the one perfect for the task of leading the nation. The height of contradiction!

There must be something else in the presidency than what is publicly known. A presidential candidate needs to spend millions and millions to run a nationwide campaign. In a full six-year term, the president’s salary will not even amount to a measly one-fourth of his total campaign expenditures.

So what’s the fervor for the presidency all about – love of country? Good gracious, what divine sense of nationalism!

We need a president who is not only sincere but competent as well, one who has solid credibility to bring the whole nation together, national solidarity being a fundamental value necessary for the much desired peace and prosperity in the country. It is hard, I know, to find these qualities in one package. In the meantime, we continue to search for a political messiah who has it all.

In the meantime, we will have to contend with an imperfect human being for the presidency. We are limited in our options to electing the one less imperfect – the lesser evil.