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I think it is pretty clear that we have a lame-duck president trying his darned best to show he is in charge. For that I wish him well. The trouble is that is all we can do — wish him well. He just does not have it. Those who say well he just might show his mettle in the last two minutes of play.  To me, that is an optimism without basis.

I predict that he will lurch from one mistake to another, from one disaster to another. And he will not cope, not because he does not want to but because he does not have it in him to want to, or worse he does not have a clue what the presidency is all about, except when people salute and move aside in deference. Obviously he enjoys the perks, why blame him?

The problem is he is not equipped to be president. From the start I was among the few who believed that he should have been left alone to live a happy personal life with his character and intellectual limitations that his own father has described as “walang ka-drive drive”.

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There are two sides here, there are those who wait and hope for a turn of events when he will be up to his role and job as president. I think many of his supporters who have now witnessed his incapacities and weaknesses are still hoping that he will change or they hope he will finish his term with flying colors or at least do better.  So to them he should just get on to do what he must do whatever his faults and frailties, while we wait how his presidency would impact on the country? I think the Glenda Gloria article “President Aquino’s reality check” is on this side.

I belong to the flip side of that coin and expect worse boos-boos to come no matter how well meaning his intentions or his lack of drive. Besides he is not the only player on the stage and I am not referring to politicians but on the millions of poor and middle-class whose sufferings can only be aggravated. There’s the rising inflation.  There’s PDAF and DAP.  The missing  CCT  claimants. The corruption is bad enough but not getting projects done is worse. There are grave problems facing the country.  

Where is the daang matuwid leading us to? There is the unpredictable and unforeseeable future. This does not depend only on him but on the people. Had times been even slightly better he may just squeak through with his moral rhetoric. That, too requires a reality check and it will not wait for President Aquino to finish his on the job training.  What they will do given their plight? Besides I don’t believe that on the job training of being the president of a country is enough. What is required – character (not just honesty and even that is put on doubt by his many decisions before and after Haiyan). It needs character and a vision for the country, both of which cannot be learned or be trained for. It is a sum total of his life’s experiences and how he learned from these, both as a person and as a politician.

When I was told about the Ninoy anecdote on his son na walang ka drive drive, I thought the father was being harsh on the son. So many of us can be said to be ‘walang ka-drive drive.” It is bad for an ordinary person but catastrophic for a President.

After more than three years in office and showing how he handles crisis I now understand what the father meant. That is consistent with what political analyst called in more sophisticated terms “the Noynoy presidency is on its “analysis-paralysis.”

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Here’s another reality check. According to this story when Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning sailed into the South China Sea last month, Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon Jr., the man who governs the Philippine town within the contested Spratly Islands, was not bothered at all.

Bito-onon’s town of Kalayaan on Pag-asa Island  which is part of the contested territories just off the Philippines’ western province of Palawan. It remains largely untouched by what a report called “the chatter in high places.” Here the Chinese and Filipinos are friends. They have been so for many years. Their comradeship comes from their being fishermen in a common sea.

“Actually, if you go there, fishermen from Hong Kong, Hainan (the Chinese province), Vietnam, Malaysia go about their usual business casually, even fishing side by side at the reef.

“But if you read the papers, you see that (officials) just don’t stop talking, as if war will begin tomorrow,” said Bito-onon.

“People can go fishing. They even exchange signals with Chinese fishermen who would approach to ask if there is pawikan (sea turtle) for sale,” the mayor said casually, making reference to the endangered species that remain a hot commodity to poachers.

The mayor reported this by phone from Palawan’s capital Puerto Princesa, where he stays to transact government business he is unable to do in his town owing to distance and limited infrastructure.

Once a month, He travels to Pag-asa Island. The entire journey is around 52 hours of travel by sea from the city or two and a half if he catches the military plane — and spends around two weeks at a time.

“If you ask about the impact on the ground, there’s is none. But up there (in government) technicalities, diplomatic implications, are what are reported in media.

“There’s a show of fighter planes, weapons ... Sometimes, just looking at them gets irritating,”  the mayor added.