There will be no cheating in May 2022  

There will be no cheating in the May 2022 elections. At least not in a palpable, massive and significant way as to alter the course of the electoral exercise. There will be a little pinching here and some twisting there to go with the territory. But overall there will be no cheating on a scale that will change the picture that is playing right before our eyes even at this very moment. I am proposing two reasons for that.

 The first reason is that Bongbong Marcos, the favorite suspect of anyone and everyone unwilling to give any of the Marcoses a chance, is the most watched person right now in the universe. And by most watched I mean closely guarded, monitored, observed, and hounded. Bongbong cannot fart without the opposition knowing and it is to his credit that his fart probably does not smell, or else another DQ would have long been filed.

Maybe the CIA is even watching Bongbong's every move. It must be pretty tough when your name is Marcos and you live in the Philippines. In this country we have the audacity to claim is 80% plus Catholic, even a Marcos that is yet to be born already carries the stigma preordained by a hatefulness difficult to fathom in an environment of such sweeping Christianity. Trust me, the temptation is great to wonder if we are not in hell already.

Even if Bongbong wanted to cheat, he couldn't. Even his own driver is probably also watching him on the sly, you know, just to see if any of the stories are true. The fact of the matter is, it is Bongbong who may have been cheated at one time in the past. I went to bed seeing him with an almost insurmountable lead. By the time I woke up, he already lost. Those who might have known the score have already fled under a clever ruse.

The second reason is that Bongbong is way way ahead in all the surveys that if the elections were held today, he would be the runaway winner without ever having to commit any shenanigans even if he could or wanted to. One survey had him a few points over the 50% mark, potentially making him our first majority president in many presidential cycles. Percentages lumped together, the rest of the field still won't be able to catch him.

When you are ahead and ahead this big, your greatest enemy will be your own self. Bongbong has to do something particularly crazy, stupid, and hare-brained to spoil and compromise his enviable position. The disqualification cases against his candidacy that are mushrooming left and right of him are the surest signs of a desperation by his enemies that can only stem from the realization of imminent losing.

But Bongbong should not be disqualified, in my humble opinion, for two things. One is that May 2022 represents the greatest chance this country will ever have of putting our martial law past to rest and move on. May 2022 will pass judgment on the Marcos legacy through Bongbong. Let us allow that to freely happen. The other reason is that it is too scary to contemplate disqualifying a candidate enjoying such a lead as Bongbong has now.

It is correct to say that the law must take its course. But isn't it also correct to say that the law is only made by agents of the people working under the ambit of a representative government? Well, the people themselves now want to directly speak, not by way of agents, but by a direct vote they need to personally cast. This time the people want to have a direct hand in charting their own destiny.

And the only way to let the people have their voices heard is to let the scheduled elections proceed in May 2022 as is, the candidate composition unaltered except by choice of the candidates themselves. For once let us have an election we can all truly be proud of. Disqualify Bongbong and the next president will be very weak, not because he or she inherently is, but because we shall have weakened the only real foundation we ever had.

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Happy birthday to my wife Arlene. Thank you for the gift of three wonderful daughters who mean the world to me.