Mystic of the reluctant candidate

By Al S. Mendoza

  THE reluctant candidate usually wins in this country.

It took a lot of convincing before Tita Cory ran for president in 1986.

When she won, the election template radically changed.

Twenty-four years after her victory, Tita Cory did not see a xerox of what she had pioneered on.

Noynoy Aquino had become president 10 months after Tita Cory succumbed to cancer.

That was in June 2010, the time when Noynoy became the second reluctant candidate to become president of the republic.

Before finally running for president, Noynoy took a lot of meditating and even went to a Mindanao seminary for a retreat to seek spiritual guidance.

It was Mar Roxas who was all set to make a go of the presidency in 2010 when Tita Cory’s death in August 2009 roused the people to egg Noynoy on to run for president. 

Unselfishly, Roxas gave in to public clamor.

Next, destiny a la Tita Cory in 1986 lurked in the horizons, which bore fruition with Noynoy’s landslide victory in 2010.

Noynoy was 25 when Tita Cory toppled Marcos in the 1986 snap polls, ending a 20-year Marcos iron-fist rule that has murdered 3,257 in extra-judicial killings, tortured 35,000-plus activists and arbitrarily imprisoned more than 70,000 anti-dictatorship revolutionaries including the one above me, Jun Velasco.

Little did Tita Cory know that her own son, Noynoy, 49 when he came to power, would become the second reluctant aspirant after her to occupy Malacanang.

Of course, there were other “reluctants” and even the late FPJ can be considered one of them.

But just as everybody thought FPJ would proceed to take the Palace in grand fashion, he was eased out of it; he was strongly believed to have been robbed of victory.

GMA a.k.a. Ate Glow got the accusing finger, worming her way to Malacanang on the sordid strength of a “Hello Garci” phone call that was loudly rumored to have given her a million-plus stolen votes to ensure victory.

Even Ate Glow was a reluctant candidate as she initially declared by the Rizal monument on Rizal Day that she would not seek the presidency in 2004.

But she changed her mind, obviously intoxicated by the perks of a Palace stay from 2001 onwards after President Erap got himself ousted by Edsa 2.

Just this week, another genuine reluctant candidate had come forward to run for vice president: Leni Robredo.

Quickly, Noynoy, now famously called P-Noy, likened Leni to Tita Cory.

“I cannot help but compare her to my mother,” P-Noy said of Leni.  “They were both suddenly widowed.  They were both previously seen as mere housewives, but were eventually called to lead.”

But like Tita Cory, will Leni also win and maintain the reluctant’s winning tradition?

But, hey, isn’t Rodrigo Duterte also considered the reluctant candidate for president, if and when he will finally decide to aim for the Palace in 2016?

And, should that happen, and Duterte and Robredo win, they become the first reluctant candidates for president and vice president to have achieved such an outstanding, it not amazing, feat together in the same election year.

Well, you know, there is always the first time.

(For your comments and reactions, please email to: punch.sunday@gmail.com)

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