Okay, we’ve had our fun. Now, perhaps, it’s time to really find out about the people applying for the job of president.
It’s not a real investigation. It’s just an elaborate cover-up, with politics and unbreakable personal relationships thrown in for good measure.
Someone spray-painted pro-Marcos graffiti on the base of the Edsa People Power monument and, predictably, only the denizens of the Yellow palace were enraged. Given that the candidate now leading the surveys in the vice presidential race is Ferdinand Marcos Jr., I think many of those who saw the “Marcos Pa Rin!” sign at the preeminent Yellow shrine must have said, if only to themselves, “Well, why the hell not?”
Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales seems all over the place all the time these days, suspending and dismissing mid-level government officials for alleged corruption. And that’s well and good, really - except that I never hear Morales going after the real big fish.
See, this is what happens when people seek political office just because they can win. And I’m not even talking about Noynoy Aquino, but of the Fighting Pride of the Philippines, Manny “Pac-Man” Pacquiao.
A friend has proposed that, since the Nacionalista Party has three members running for vice president without presidential candidates, and because three people seeking the presidency still don’t have a running mate, perhaps a raffle is in order.
As a former prosecutor, The Punisher of Davao City must be aware of Cicero’s story about a wise Roman judge who was in the habit of asking who stands to benefit from anything that takes place. Asking “Cui bono?”,the judge believed, was a surefire way of discovering who was motivated enough to cause something to happen beyond the obvious suspects, who may, in fact, be mere scapegoats.
It was the great journalist and writer Mark Twain who classified lies into three kinds: “There are lies, damn lies and statistics.”
To General “Stormin” Norman Schwarzkopf is (falsely) attributed the pithy quote, to the effect that terrorists will be judged by God while his job is to merely hurry up the meeting. The hoax-busting site Snopes notes that the quote has been around since 2001, but “in an odd instance of the tail wagging the dog, in 2003 the General is on record as repeating a close version of the words years earlier attributed to him.”
Now that Senator Grace Poe has declared for the presidency, the battle for the highest post in the land has been joined. Assuming that Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte makes good on his vow not to run for president, the race for Malacañang promises to be a humdinger, a three-cornered fight that looks to go down the wire.