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You put in a few pesos and it will play the song of your
choice. This is the jukebox of yore, that boxy, chunky player of
music before the Walkman and the downloads.
The jukebox is having a resurrection of sorts.
Cory Aquino played the Noli-is-my-president-song. With this as cue, an
entire section of the punditry chorused a refrain.
We all thought that with the level of political consciousness
rising, there would be more prudence, judiciousness, and
discernment on the issue of presidential succession just in case
Mrs. Arroyo does the impossible—which is to leave Malacañang
voluntarily.
But clearly there is none. The proposal to have
Noli de Castro succeed Mrs. Arroyo is a step backward, even with all
the constitutional invocation that it is the right and legal thing
to do. If Mrs. Arroyo is forced out of office, Mr. de Castro has to
pack up too and leave. For our sake and for the nation. As I said
before, it is like jumping from the frying pan into something close
to biblical damnation.
Despite his bold declaration that he is
ready to assume the presidency, de Castro is not morally,
intellectually and temperamentally prepared for the presidency.
The first time he became Malacañang OIC, his first order of
business was to ask about the status of government construction
contracts.
He skipped the important agenda of the nation:
the state of national security, the state of the economy, the
volatility of Philippine politics—and went straight to the heart
of what he understood as the soul of government, construction
projects.
Did he ask about the poor? Did he ask about the
struggle of families that cannot make both ends meet? Did he inquire
about an agenda for those living in the margin, the faceless,
voiceless and hopeless Filipinos? Or, did he express concern over
the welfare of overseas Filipino workers, a sector that is
clearly (at least according to his public statements) close to his
heart?
On second thought, what are these sectors to
him?
Even the argument that de Castro is the
constitutional successor stands on shaky grounds.
If the 2004 elections elected the late Fernando
Poe Jr. as president, there is no way de Castro won as
vice-president. The returns from Pampanga, Pangasinan, Bohol,
Iloilo and Cebu have been sullied beyond recognition. So with votes
from Mindanao, where Poe and running-mate Loren Legarda won
convincingly. De Castro won in certain media tallies, which also
erroneously forecasted that Mrs. Arroyo carried Metro Manila via a
convincing margin over Poe.
De Castro also won in the personal tally of a
certain Atty. Makalintal. But in the actual votes and in the hearts
and minds of Filipinos, he lost that election. The surveys that
showed that de Castro is the number-one choice for the presidency,
remember, was polled by the same outfit that gleefully declared that
Metro Manila voted overwhelmingly for Mrs. Arroyo in the
2004 presidential election.
The jukebox refrain that de Castro has more
brains than Erap Estrada, as if Erap is the paragon of brainy, is a
sham argument. Erap has a sharper mind than de Castro, despite his
years of boozing, Erap has an IQ twice that of de Castro. Erap
is a quicker study. Years of quoting scripts from memory has kept
Erap’s mind alert.
De Castro had spent decades reading from
teleprompters and had to be coached on foreign names and strange
words that had to be part of his news script.
Chief Justice Reynato Puno, Senate President
Manny Villar and Speaker Prospero Nograles will all be terribly
crushed by the ascension of de Castro to the presidency. Same with Senator
Legarda. All these personalities can be president tomorrow and
function as president on day one.
Should the impossible take place and
Mrs. Arroyo leaves the presidency, the ascension of de Castro
would mean a long, long learning curve. Gut feel and
instinctive genius are out of the picture. The handicap of de
Castro is not only intellectual immaturity. It is the lack of
compassion and heart for the everyman despite years of pretending
that he is for the common man.
Courage and guts? We all know that up to
now, he still is where he has positioned himself in the
tumultuous 2005: straddling two fences, never taking a strong stand,
shrewdly calculating what position would benefit him most.
A snap election or a junta, either choice
fraught with danger, looms as a more attractive choice than a de
Castro presidency.
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