Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Bongbong Marcos to risk all?

Everyone agrees that Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr deserves a higher post. For one, he is intelligent. His heart seems to be at the right place, and Bongbong is someone who knows what he is doing and knows how to get what he wants.

Among those who aspire for the top post, Bongbong enjoys a distinct advantage--he is familiar with government and its processes. Bongbong carries with him a surname which is synonymous with greatness. The only real problem is the name also carries with it a stigma.

What stigma? A political stigma that is.

It is not the actions of his father during Martial law that made people hate or even loathe the Marcos political brand name, no. It was the excesses that even Bongbong took part of that most people remember. Most people do not blame Bongbong's father, Ferdinand senior for declaring Martial law. Most people accepted and even admitted that it was a necessary means towards a greater end--a more ordered society.

What turned the people's admiration into hatred was when Marcos and his family, and that included Bongbong were seen living the high life while the rest of the country was suffering the effects of a dire economic recession.

Many died during Martial law, but not a whimper was heard from the majority of the people because that was a silent acceptance of the declared system.

The people only resorted to violent acts when they saw how the Marcosses hobnobbed with royalty while most of the people suffered and reeled from poverty.

It was the people who gave Marcos the opportunity of leading this country towards an authentic revolution. Yet, Marcos decided to veer away from the very reason why he declared Martial law, and that was correct the monumental flaws of the system, and obliterate the greedy elites that hampered the progress of this country from third world to first world status during the sixties.

Marcos, back then, was a symbol of both resistance and renaissance. Resistance because he came from the professional classes and renaissance because the people think that he has the intellect and the might, the power to effect the change, the way every Filipino wanted it.

Yet, Marcos bungled that historic opportunity. Marcos was a symbol for change yet he himself became a target of resistance later in life because he conveniently forgot the very thing that endeared him with the masses in the first place--the masses saw in him, a champion, that was admired because of his wit, his principles and his sense of History.

Now, Bongbong thinks that it is his time to get hold of History and snatch it away from all the other pretenders for the throne. What Bongbong forgets and he must be made to remember it, is that he still represents a political legacy that is as spotty as it is loathsome.

He carries none of the promises that the masses saw in his father during his father's prime. Marcos senior symbolized a cause. Marcos junior does not. What cause does Bongbong represent? The "Tayo-Tayo" ideology espoused by his TV ADVERTISEMENT and which shows him doing a selfie with young people?

A classic empty promise of windmills? The shallow hope that a smile gives to its beneficiary?

Bongbong is risking all if he decides to really accept this illusion being peddled by many of him gunning for the vice presidency even though there is really no pillar by which his belief of a general sentiment about the Marcos regime stands from.

I think this is not the ripe time for Bongbong to jump into the fire. For one, Bongbong must prove to all and sundry that he runs for the right reasons and not because his mother expects him to or his financiers want him to get the highest post.

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