Prissy prose
Front cover of a national daily - our dearest president, wearing a simple aqua blue dress with matching aqua Havaiana slippers (two inches thick), walking around a public market, supposedly checking out the prices of school supplies.
My thoughts, in the following order, are:
First - wow! She’s supposed to be exemplifying the Filipino values of simplicity and frugality, and here she is sporting the most expensive pair of rubber flip-flops in the market. Branded, and imported from
Second - what’s a president doing out in public wearing, of all things, slippers!? Doesn’t she know that it’s a no-no for ladies to be seen in their housewear out of the house? Or does she think the entire country is her backyard?
Third - hmm. I can see she’s compensating for her height.
Fourth - and this is perhaps the observation with the most substance - what’s a president doing checking prices in the public market? Isn’t she supposed to be too busy solving important affairs of the state? Why does she have time to travel all the way into the midst of an urban jungle so she can traipse around the crowded aisles of a palengke? And doesn’t she have a million functionaries she can snap her fingers at, and then command to run out of the palace and into that hot and humid market? Or she can’t trust her competent employees to do even that?
Where’s her sense of priorities?
Here we go again - our president is trying to win some political points by portraying herself as pro-poor. I don’t know why she has to do this, considering the local and senatorial elections are over, and she has no more candidates to endorse. What will she gain? Is it because she wants to convince the impoverished populace she really has their poor interests at heart?
Now, if Gloria really wanted to do something good with the rest of her term, she should just hunker down and start laying the final touches to her presidency.
This is the best time to make sure her programs are firmly in place (and that her tracks are covered). This is the time to implement those promises, and make them work so well and embed them so deep that it will be out of the question for future successors to muck it up. (Also, she can make sure that nothing her successor will dig up once she’s out of the post will reflect badly at her. There should be nothing to point manicured fingers at later on, when she won’t have the same resources at her disposal.)
Right now, her star is rising on the horizon, what with the peso surging against the dollar, the stock market moving up in quantum leaps, and Havaianas manufacturing slippers with height-boosting heels. She should seize this momentum, and try to convince us that hey, maybe she wasn’t so bad, after all.
But she can’t simply rest on her laurels with the next half of her term still to consume. Now is not the time to crow. But what with her jetting off to
This is, I guess, the most important appeal we can make to the president. Try not to screw up our nation too much. Try to think about development, and where to lead this nation. Try to focus on what’s essential. Oh, what the heck, just try.
We don’t need to see you, madame president, in carefully constructed photo-ops. This elaborate charade is tiresome. In fact, we don’t need to see you - period. Just flip-flop your way to the Palace and get down to work.
Later on, when you have something great to report, you can use the entire media office at your disposal so you can broadcast whatever message you want to send to the nation, and then we can keep abreast as to whatever you’re doing. You can have weekly or monthly tv spots, and have friendly fireside chats with the countryside. Propaganda is easy.
But meaningful progress? Your legacy to the country as president? For that, you better work.
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