Spot the phonies
Thirty-three years after the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship, and two Aquino presidencies later, one would have thought the Marcos issue would finally cease to play any part in anyone's electoral campaign. And more so since the presidency is not even at stake in the midterm polls in May.
But either some candidates, mostly for the Senate, just could not move on from the past, or have campaigns that are too limp and bankrupt to push any fresh ideas, that they feel compelled to resurrect the Marcos bogey yet one more time. If there is one thing truly remarkable about this strategy, it is how enduring its shelf life is.
If only the results can be as remarkable. Unfortunately, it has been proven time and again that getting elected on the strength of Marcos phobia does not necessarily translate into the attainment of anything closely resembling a viable Marcos alternative. The nation has repeatedly been raped on the "never again" promise, and made to issue forth babies that are all still-born.
It is time this country and this people elect leaders with truly attainable promises, no matter how couched in lesser bombast or agitation. Marcos has long gone. The Filipino nation has put in place institutional safeguards to prevent a repeat of mistakes of the past. The intervening years ought to be enough to learn our lessons well.
To keep up the unending Marcos lecture is to insult the collective intelligence of the Filipino people. The Filipino people must refuse to be treated like idiots who cannot differentiate right from wrong, especially after having emerged from such a character-defining experience as the Marcos years.
Candidates who keep harping about dead issues must be repudiated at the polls for they are phonies. They have no clear vision of the way forward. They cannot rise tall on their own merits but must rely for extra height on the pile of long dead bodies that have already given what they must to God and country and history.
The best leaders are those who manage to see positive things even in the most challenging of times. They are the ones we can trust with our future and our lives. Those who see only the negatives, and worse, see only the long-rectified negatives of the past, can only lead us over the precipice, for they lead with eyes looking backward.
We do not expect any dramatic changes to happen based on the outcome of the coming election. The executive leadership of the country is not on the block at this time. But we can help make executive decisions that need to be made in the next three years clearer if we do away with the clutter that has only impeded us from where we ought to be now after, well, Marcos.
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