I have one very great disappointment regarding the coming elections. Imelda Marcos is running for Congress in Ilocos. That means I could not vote for her. Had she aspired for some other position that would have allowed me the opportunity to vote for her, I would have.
My ex-future vote for Imelda is not a vote signifying appreciation for what she has been accused of doing during the reign of her husband, Ferdinand Marcos. Neither is it a vote to show solidarity with my wife's fellow Waray.
My ex-future vote for Imelda is a vote of protest against all the hypocrites now running for office. Since they are simply too many and it is virtually impossible for me to "not vote" against all of them, then I would have voted for the one person they pretend to be so unlike.
For so many years, the hypocrites have made Imelda the convenient scapegoat for their own sins and shortcomings. They have made her the dumpsite of the trash they are not willing to admit as their own.
To the hypocrites, Imelda is the neighbor's gate against which they let their dogs relieve themselves, not wanting to soil their own premises with the natural biological processes that their expensive pets come with.
Imelda has paid for her sins, according to God's wishes. For God intervened in the events surrounding Edsa 1986 and afterward. For how else could the nation, at a time of flying tempers, have dismantled a dictatorship without bloodshed had not God willed it that way.
Indeed, the nation, of its own volition, erected a shrine to the Blessed Virgin at Edsa in recognition of this "miracle." And yet, how hollow has the recognition become in face of the continuing practices that are the direct opposite of what Edsa was all about.
My ex-future vote for Imelda is also for her unwavering insistence on her own "truths" even if these go against the truths the rest of the nation hold. This makes her distinct from the hypocrites whose "truths" change as quickly as the latest expediency presents itself.
There is not a politician in this country who does not have one or more elements of what hypocrisy forces him or her to see in Imelda but not in himself or herself. In the politics of scale, everyone is an Imelda but is just to chickenshit to admit it.
At least Imelda stands her ground. In an interview, Imelda said: "They stormed the Palace and came looking for skeletons. When they opened my closet, they found shoes. How can such things of beauty ever be bad?" Even in her contradictions, you see the vein of her truths throbbing.
The worst person to ever elect into office, or even to comment on those seeking election, is that who sees all the wrongs in others but cannot see the same is his or her own self. These hypocrites can never be accountable to the nation.
But why Imelda over the others? Because she has already been there. Do you honestly think she would still be around if God had not willed it to be? Even in this kingdom on earth, nothing has legally pinned her to the ground.
Imelda may have done so many bad things in her life, but unlike all of the hypocrites, she never pretended to be otherwise. Instead she tried to explain them away in accordance with her own view of life.
Now, if her views contradict everything the rest of us hold as good and true, at least she is standing up to defend them. By contrast, the hypocrites around us never own up to anything detrimental to their interests but pass them on as the handiwork of others.