Dear future presidential candidate

The time for filing your candidacy is near, and so begins the slew of announcements of bids, including yours. (No, Grace Poe, I’m not only referring to you.) When the time comes, you will stand on a stage amid confetti and that lady’s voice cooing “May bagong umagang parating.” You will stand tall and strong as you begin the several months-long seduction in order to garner our votes.

You will lay on the flattery good and thick, most of which will actually be sincere. We all know you love this country, its people, and what we are capable of. Even you corrupt ones deserve a moment of appreciation now and then for your Filipino resilience and ingenuity (before you return to filling your money bags). You will tell us what we already know and believe in — that our country is beautiful, that it has struggled for too long, and that it deserves much better.

You will then begin the delicate and problematic process of stating your intentions. This is where most things go awry, because it involves making promises. You will look at all the available sectors and divisions within the citizenry — the old, the young, the religious, the poor, the wealthy, the working class, the LGBT — and you will throw them each a bone. You will make references to “may forever” and popular memes as you promise us things like no more traffic, faster police response time, Internet for everyone, healthcare for all, education for those who cannot afford it, better infrastructure, and possibly the eradication of hunger.

It will be sexy, it will be inspiring, and it will make us hope.

As an ordinary citizen, I ask you to stop this cycle of abuse. I ask you not to take my hope and the hope of millions of others so lightly as you begin this journey across our isles in hopes of gaining the presidency.

The things you are hoping to change have been this way for decades, and you are claiming the power to change the course of what is and what has been in six years. I’m sorry to be a Negative Nancy here, but there is only so much a person can do, given the time frame and given the amount of corrupt figures with tenure inside the president’s office. The figurehead changes but the system does not, which is and what always has stunted the progress of our beloved nation.

It is a tough job and one that you are currently interviewing for. We, the common people, are the ones turning over nearly half our pay to your institution so that your programs (not your pockets) can keep running. This effectively makes us your bosses, and as those deciding whether or not you are fit to fill the position, we need to know more than just how you feel about current issues. When we ask you what you hope to get out of this job, standard blanket promises are akin to an answer like, “Something that makes me smile in the morning and gives me purpose.” That’s great, sweetie, but we’re not electing you president just so you can feel better about yourself.

We need an actual, tangible plan. Rather than telling us that you’re going to up and fix everything that’s wrong, we need you to give us access to solutions. For instance, rather than announcing the pipe dream of free nationwide high-speed Internet (which is really about as likely as Leonardo DiCaprio right-swiping you on Tinder), discuss the possibility of actual fair competitive rates. Tell us your plan to lean on providers to improve their services under fear of serious penalty, to make it impossible for those who provide any and all services to do so at their current substandard rate.

We need to know what you’re made of, to see how you intend on standing up to the existing bureaucracy. When you address the current traffic situation, we need more than your outrage at how fellow Filipinos spend at least five hours on the road daily just going to work and back home. We need to know if you plan on banning certain cars, if you plan on instituting penalties for multiple car owners, how you plan on beefing up traffic laws so that every jerk who makes a wrong turn or has zero sense of decorum is caught and tried.

When you say you plan on making more highly restrictive laws against violent crimes, to keep Filipinos both safe and unified, do we, with our nation ranking third in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ impunity index, get to see what justice looks like when it’s served? Will we be able to give rest to the 58 souls lost in Maguindanao seven years ago in the worst election-related instance of violence recorded in our nation’s history? Can we finally hold people accountable for lives and money that they take, even when they enjoy a large threshold of power? Is this the kind of change we hope to see, or are we like certain city mayors, running after petty criminals and making them swallow cigarette butts after they litter?

We need a reason to hope, and not only because of your lush sentiments and inspiring words, but because the beautiful things we love about our country keep getting crowded by the muck. We are sick and tired of feeling helpless before a system that continually and shamelessly serves itself before it serves its citizens.

Before you ask for our vote, give us a concrete view of what change looks like and what steps it takes to get there. Because if you don’t know — if all you have are lofty ideas and no actual insight — you need to leave right now. You have no business here, candidate. We have always deserved better, and we’re banking on 2016 to be the year we finally get it.