Election “activists” are now calling for Filipinos to vote for candidates who are “honest”, “competent”, and “experienced”. Specifically most of these calls come from supporters of Liberal Party presidential candidate Mar Roxas — the “anointed” successor to current Philippine President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III. Calling for those virtues and then dropping Roxas’s name is a quaint trick to implant that association in Filipino voters’ pea-sized brains who will then go off to conclude that:
Mar Roxas = Honest + Competent + Experienced
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The irony is lost in those associated with this camp considering that the whole idea that a country of 100 million could be run by a president who is anything but was actually started by the very matriarch of this mob.
Back in 1985, the late Corazon “Cory” Aquino, who happens to be the mother of current President BS Aquino, was chosen to run in the “snap election” organised by then President Ferdinand Marcos. The notion of a widow — who lacked experience in politics, whose competence was unproven, and whose honesty was assumed on the basis of nothing else other than her being an Aquino — running against a bar top-notching veteran politician with more than 20 years experience governing a country was embraced by a desperate people.
The thing with desperation is that it likely results in rash decisions that prove to be sub-optimal in the long run — like the way ageing bachelors and bachelorettes throw themselves onto the next available soul who throws a wink at them.
This is exactly what happened to the Philippines. President Cory Aquino set a fatal precedent in Philippine politics that continues to reverberate today. She and the emo perpetually tear-jerking rhetoric that blanketed the country during her term and in its wake and the cheesy ballads and appeals to never-ending victimhood that composed it ruled Philippine political discourse for decades. It culminated in the ascent to power of her son who, at the time of his forced candidacy, was just as inexperienced, incompetent, and reluctant as his mother. And it was the same desperation that propelled him to power — basta “honest”, never mind kung tanga was the philosophy guiding the vote at the time.
Well, lookee now, now BS Aquino’s “successor” presents himself as “honest, competent, and experienced” to an electorate conditioned for decades by his own party to vote stupid and inexperienced. How’s that for irony?
Like all ironies lost in the Filipino, this one will likely remain lost in an electorate famous for doing the same thing over and over again while expecting “different” results. On a campaign “platform” as trite and unoriginal as “honesty, competence, and experience” runs the “good” candidate touted as the one who will carry on BS Aquino’s Daang Matuwid (“straight path”) governance dogma. Is this something Filipinos will lap up with glee all over again?
It gets worse, actually. Roxas is languishing in third behind candidates that, by most measures, fare even worse in terms of measuring up to those ideals. Vice President Jejomar Binay, perhaps (albeit arguably) meeting the experience and competence standards is widely perceived to be a fail when it comes to the “honesty” bit. The other, Grace Poe, is a no-brainer. Poe, a newbie Senator, is an automatic fail in the “experience” and “competence” departments — which leaves the “honesty” bit. Is Poe “honest”? The baffling debate over the question of her Philippine citizenship brings even that to question. The fact that this “debate” had dragged on this long all but indicates that there is a lot to be said about that as well.
Stepping back from all that detail, the real point to be made here is that no true leaders have stepped up to invest in a credible bid for the presidency. Filipinos have been reduced to having to choose from this sad lot. Perhaps these elections are a significant milestone marking the point where the truly competent have given up on a society that has accrued an extensive track record of rewarding mediocrity mightily. And we have to thank the Aquinos and their Yellow horde for deeply-embedding that culture in the Philippines.
Do Filipinos deserve better than Roxas, Binay, and Poe? The fact that these three represent the top winnables today proves that this crop is all Filipinos deserve. The better question would have been: Do Filipinos have an opportunity to choose the best and brightest to be their leader? The answer to that is easy. Yes they do. But, tragically, they elect not to exercise that option.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
It’s final: we’re stuck with these 3 stooges to entertain us till Election Day.
But the fact that these 2 job descriptions are now surfacing:
Honest/incorruptible and competent/experienced – says a lot about how much Phil politics has awoken to realize what we need in a leader.
Hopefully, some day – an authentic Zaxxun-class Lee Kwan Yew will arise.
For now I am resigned to just sit back relax and enjoy this circus.
an LKY type? district gerrymandering to the next level? legalized corruption and nepotism? an all powerful state-run media that shuts down websites like this? be careful what you wish for.
benignO may be putting the cart before the horse in the last paragraph.Where are the UNwinnables to offer a better option?If your restaurant menu offers pork,pork or pork,what does the vegetarian order? Should ‘None of the above’ make it to the ballot paper?
The only candidates worthy of proper voting—who are truly honest AND competent AND experienced—are all dead. The last one was killed in a plane crash going home to Naga in 2012.
Jesse Robredo for President, 2016.
If only these 3 idiots are the choices for president, then the voters can just leave it blank. Then the senate president will be the acting president, until a new president is chosen. I just do not understand how to choose the president in this case.
Would be interesting if nobody at all voted. Problem is there would still be votes to count. It’s the Philippines afterall right!
Pride in office without competence is as much a sin as competence without confidence.
No, its not…its not even close.
Probably won’t make much of a difference (performance-wise) which of the 3 stooges lands on the throne to play make-believe “President”.
Maybe what we should concern ourselves instead is: which of the 3 is the LEAST of an EYESORE to see on the TV screen and front pages on a daily basis for the next 6 years.
On that criterion – looks like Poe and her buddy-bear Escudero are the freshest faces. So sorry it has to come to this – a sad day indeed for Phil politics.
If this goes on, soon we’ll find ourselves picking candidates from models and beauty contestants.
Pretty much that an old Pinoy comedy/spoof film “Barbie for President” would be merely a few steps away into becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If I see the picture of Mar Roxas; I see “incompetence” marked on his forehead.
How can he explain, his relief management in the Typhoon Yolanda victims reliefs? He was playing politics. And, the relief goods rot in warehouses. Ye, he was there having a good time on photo opportunities, to look, like he was working hard.
Honesty? If Mar Roxas would be, “honest”. Every liar would be considered, “honest”. To call, the Mamapasano massacre, a “misencounter”, is not honesty. It is hiding the Fatal Truth.
Experienced? Maybe, experienced in licking the Ass Hole of Aquino.
Mar Roxas should be ashame of himself. To present himself to Filipino voters…however, he has no shame…because he thinks, all Filipinos are as stupid, as him.
Filipino politicians greatest talent is that they know no-shame. They are the smart ones who do not give a shit about ‘losing face’, that loser mentality that is so ingrained in poor-people globally. The idiotic nature of the idea that a poor-person, who obviously has nothing else to lose but his dignity, would give a shit about losing such a thing ? The truly ignorant sombrero that hat wearing poor people around the globe cling to is the one thing that Filipino politicians know is for idiots.They really are a talented lot, but use their talents nefariously.
Francois Munderrundter,
Filipinos’ greatest talent is they know how to kiss up to their foreign and local benefactors, while playing the victims at the same time. When they get what they want, they flaunt what they have in front of their people and taunt the latter to become envious and covetous. This is the name of the game, in the Philippines and abroad, that is being played by Filipinos.
Aeta
Aeta
And Aetas are the most progressive people in the Philippines.
Give me a break.
hahacienda,
Aetas are not the most progressive people in the Philippines, but they are who we came from and a part of our heritage, regardless of how aristocratically we’ve become by being ‘mongrelized’ by the Caucasian race from other countries.
Your condescending attitude towards our indigenous tribes is the problem with our people today, and the reason we cannot figure out who the hell we really are as Filipinos, and why we are always trying to compete with one another for wealth and regal status.
We are too hung up on our foreign lineage and social sophistication “sosyal”of being world class, just because we’ve been to other parts of the world as international servants and maids.
Regardless of how much we think we’ve achieved in this world by adapting foreign religion, education, and social skills, we are still “Aeta” in the eyes of the international communities, for the simple reason we still behave in a tribal and feudal manners when it comes to how we treat our country and people.
Aeta
Just cut away the tall grass and see this what’s really underneath this article. It says “VOTE MARCOS”. That’s what this website has been all about from the very beginning. It’s primary objective is to put what Lee Kuan Yew refer to as “Kleptocrats” back in power.
Yep, the oligarchs are coming out of the woodwork,again.
You and Francois Munderrundter have got to be that dense to paint this site as a pro-Marcos site based on this article alone.
They even have posts that mock the need to kiss dictator wannabees asses like Duterte’s.
@ Hoff, No…not dense and not ONE article……WAKE UP !!!
The fact that the two clans that were at the forefront of Failipino politics in the mid-1980’s are still the two major political families 30+ years later is proof positive that NOTHING HAS CHANGED.The country is mired in a never ending corruption riddled cluster-fuck of politicians stealing everything that is not nailed down. Even the relief supplies for Typhoon Yolanda victims were confisated by the government and then sold for a profit, and what was not sold rotted in a warehouse and never reached the victim’s. The country could not be more fucked.
The scumbag in this article is just another example of what the face of corrpution looks like in the banana republic that could have been a 1st world country post WW2, but due to an unlimited number of familial scumbags that take turns that do nothing but serve themselves at the feeding trough.
@hof, read a few more recent postings, you will see.
A decent article up until the part where the author states “and we have to thank the yellow-horde….”. It seems that the author forgets who was running the country before the late Mrs. Aquino. A certain criminal scumbag that stole everything that was not nailed down, imprisoned his perceived ‘enemies’ (who were no more than potential political election rivals) and ,well you know the rest.
and now, at the sad point in time where the articles at GRP beg people to differ and search for something ‘NEW’ they prostitute themselves to the ‘NOTHING NEW’ Son of the criminal scumbag who led the country into the arms of the EDSA rabble.
How does this square the circle of corruption that has never rescinded in over 50 years? By electing the progeny of the guy who stole USD $Billions and never returned them, and whose wife openly brags about having these ill-gotten funds and to think that the Son of these two criminals has every opportunity to avail himself of these funds….HOW DOES THAT SIGNAL A HOPEFUL FUTURE? To completely regress into allowing the dynasty that ruled the country during the most, up to that point, corruption riddled, socially stagnated times (and who never really left, but just waited for the clamor to die down a bit before returning to their riches and wait for their turn to run things again)is progress?
The Failippines is doomed by such thinking, there are no good choices and the people are not to blame, no. they are fucked into submission and until a few hundred thousand of them are willing to die for the right to run a country for the good of the people, EXPECT NOTHING TO CHANGE. and in the meantime, do as GRP does and back a candidate and hope he treats you right when the jobs get handed out.
There are no good choices for the job of President of the Philippines.Not these three bozo-no-no-clowns and certainly not the Son of the late Ferdinand Marcos either. The Man who claims that he was a victim, whose Mother states on youtube that ‘Bong-Bong’ suffered the most. Talk about victimizational bullshit. The Marcos family has never wanted for a single thing in the last 70 years, post WW2, and that is a fact. For that woman to paint her Son, the wannabe President, as a victim of the EDSA ‘Revolution’ (more like charade) is unmitigated audacity and anyone who supports it is as much a criminal conspirator as the culprits themselves.
To admonish one group of ‘danng matuwid’ candidates as bullshit artists and then claim that the former family of one of the top twenty scumbags of the twentieth century are any better is both unmitigated audacity and just as big a bullshit artist as the family themselves.Wrap your head around that, OK? and have the balls to leave this comment up for a change, eh? OR your just as full-of-shit as the rest of the people you accuse as being such.
Francois Munderrundter,
“There are no good choices for the job of President of the Philippines.”
Filipinos are not effective leaders but good followers to non-Filipinos, for the simple reason that the “the blind [cannot] lead the blind.”
Aeta
One of my workmate said he won’t vote for Binay because he’s dirty to the core. He said he voted him as VP but after his corruption was highlighted, his term was “nakakasuka na”. Then the other told us her vote goes to Poe after hearing her declaration for Presidency. She sounded believable to her. The other one seconded saying compare to Mar, Poe it seems would deliver better performance since she’s no puppet of PNoy. The one who said he won’t vote for Binay said he’s not sure who to vote. I told them I’d rather not vote if those three are the only choices given how NOT presidentiable they are. But of course there are still many Filipinos who will vote because voting is their best way of practicing democracy. Some even bragged about voting, the process and not really about making the right or best choice. Well then they should ponder with this – what if one of them becomes the President.
Yellowtards’ idiotic thinking: “If you are against Aquino and his minions; you are for Marcos…” What an idiotic thinking. The Aquinos are also a bunch of thieves and scammers. Just look at the Hacienda Luisita; the DAP, PDAF, Pork Barrel Bribery, etc…All of them have looted the National Treasury; and scammed the Filipino people.
Mar Roxas competent?!it should be Mar the “Naive”, seems he really don’t know what is going on in our country, his image is still stuck on Aquino’s bum means he is just an arsehole!!????