General Admission
Destiny’s child
By Al S. Mendoza
SINCE everybody’s talking about the 2016 election this early, let’s bring it on, fellers.
Who will succeed P-Noy?
Rody Duterte? Mar Roxas? Grace Poe? Jojo Binay?
OK, let’s add three more: Alan Peter Cayetano, Chiz Escudero or Ping Lacson?
Next: Who could be the most likely official candidate/s?
We used to have conventions to select the standard bearer.
But after that embarrassing 1992 flop when Fidel V. Ramos nudged the late Ramon Mitra out of the grid following Mitra’s convention triumph, the political game has changed, rather weirdly.
After Erap’s ouster from the Palace in 2001, Ate Glow became president for nine years when the Constitution allows only a six-year term limit—all because Ate Glow reneged on her promise not to run in 2004.
Ate Glow won, only to see her mandate pursued relentlessly by rabid accusations she stole the 2004 election from the late FPJ, buttressed by her infamous “Hello Garci” phone call during the vote-counting to allegedly help ensure a winning margin of one million for her over FPJ in Mindanao.
As fate would have it, after her term in 2010, Ate Glow is now under hospital arrest for almost five years at Veterans Q.C., mainly on alleged illegal fund transfers she had authorized at the Sweepstakes Office.
And in the last presidential election in 2010, who would win but P-Noy, the reluctant candidate?
P-Noy was thrust to Malacanang for two reasons:
(1) His mother, Tita Cory, died of cancer. An outpouring of sympathy shouldered P-Noy to Malacanang.
(2) Mar Roxas, the presidential front-runner before Tita Cory’s death, heeding the cry of the moment, gave way to P-Noy. Friendship at its best.
On that, will Mar Roxas do a sequel, as to also give way to Grace Poe—as the seeming clamor of the moment yet again is for FPJ’s adopted daughter to go for the jugular in 2016?
It has become apparent, if not obvious, that the presidency is not to be chased, as in the cases of both Tita Cory and P-Noy, who were both propped up by circumstances erupting at the most unexpected but opportune time.
Are we seeing it again in the case of Grace Poe, a foundling and, therefore, making her an instant darling of the masses always enamored with underdogs, if not downright fairy tale fantasy?
To be sure, each of the seven hopefuls mentioned above is qualified to become the next president.
Yes, Grace Poe may be that popular but then, she has yet to have a lock on the nomination process.
What’s clear at the moment is, it’s still a wild, wide, woolly race to the Palace by the Pasig.
Thus, all seven can always say, Malacanang remains destiny’s child.
Perhaps, this one from Robert Louis Stevenson is worth pondering on to the seven: “Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.”
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