Medium Rare
Jullie Y. Daza
President Duterte waiting for a sign before he agrees to run for vice president. Vice President Robredo continues to play the guessing game, but it’s very possible she’ll be a candidate for president. What if they both win?
In the middle of the year 2022, VP Robredo becomes president, and President Duterte is installed as her VP. Weird and wild but anything can happen. Only in the Philippines.
Another what-if. What happens if Mayor Sara Duterte runs for president and wins, and her father wins as her vice president? Duterte-Duterte: who’s da boss? The people of Davao City have seen how it worked, with Vice Mayor Digong playing a harmonious second fiddle to Mayor Sara. Father knows best, except that there’s a fly in this ointment: The Philippines is not Davao City. . . unless the tribalistic, clannish people of Luzon and Visayas support a Mindanao riding-in-tandem.
The red herrings will get redder and more fishy on June 12, when the opposition coalition of 1Sambayan announce their candidates. Or will the herrings be jumping out of the kettle? What a pity, that the Liberal Party has been so decimated after a second Aquino presidency that as CNN Philippines reported, from 7,200 members in 2016 its numbers have dwindled to 670 (2019 figures).
As a fence-sitter and nonpartisan member of media, I’d wish for a dynamic opposition ticket, if only to spark the election campaign. Give them a fighting chance to excite the electorate! Let them pick a host of young, hot, attractive candidates who will electrify first-time voters, young adults, millennials and their GenZ ilk! With their youthful looks, energy, creativity, and new ideas, they should get the show on the road with color, drama, vitality!
The field is wide open – take a glimpse of the “performing mayors” who’ve done a whale of a job normalizing an abnormal world. Their constituents recognize them for their deeds, how vastly different they are from the dolts and dullards. In this day and age of the pandemic, the incumbents -- if they’ve been doing their job – need not worry about their p.r. when the time comes to brandish their names.
Their work has branded them as serviceable. That’s all there is to it.