Countdown

People keep asking: is this the final word, cross his heart and hope to die?

Or will President Aquino change his tune again, if fourth quarter figures show his party’s “sentimental favorite” for 2016 still languishing in the surveys?

The doubts about his pronouncement should indicate to P-Noy what he has lost in terms of public trust since corruption scandals rocked his tuwid na daan or straight path. For a while he seemed unable to comprehend the impact on his credibility of his declared wish for six more years in power.

When he confirmed what his BFF Mar Roxas first floated, that he was eyeing a second run for president, P-Noy’s staunch supporters were divided. One group insisted that Noynoy Aquino would never dishonor the memory of his parents by wanting to perpetuate himself in power, which would require tinkering with the Constitution that his mom so strongly defended against self-serving amendments. Another group said he was seriously interested in six more years, believing that he alone held the key to national (and Liberal Party) salvation.

Now it looks like the LP has been heartened by the impact of the ongoing Senate grilling on 2016 frontrunner Jejomar Binay, and thinks Roxas might stand a chance.

P-Noy has 602 days left in his presidency. My reading is that deep down, he truly is counting down to his last day in office, that he can’t wait to get his laidback life back, enjoying fast cars, guns, and women who aren’t trawling for commitment. But there are voices (boses, not bosses) whispering in his ear that he can’t easily brush away.

As his late mother said, the honor of the presidency is so great it will always stick to anyone who has held the position. It doesn’t matter whether a president has served a single term or two. Or even whether the term was finished or not – as Joseph Estrada has shown.

Unless P-Noy has been chain-smoking something other than nicotine lately, it does look like he’s given his final word: no more second term.

This raises the question of why the only son of Ninoy and Cory Aquino even contemplated an idea that he would later describe as “not the right thing to do.”

So who planted the wrong thing in his head? Obviously some folks who stand to benefit from six more years in power.

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With that hallucination out of the way, P-Noy should now focus on his last two minutes. What had he hoped to achieve when he was suddenly thrust by his mother’s death into the nation’s highest office?

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, at the start of her nine years in power, said she was not aiming for greatness but merely wanted to be a “good” president. In private, GMA reportedly intimated to trusted individuals that considering the dirty nature of Philippine politics, a president had to make certain compromises. Was the price of such compromises worth it?

Noynoy Aquino’s message in his ascent to power was that costly compromises could be avoided, that there is another way of doing business in this land of malleable laws and transactional politics.

Believing that voters put him in office to clean up government, buying his “kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” campaign battle cry, P-Noy has made no secret of his hope that by the time he steps down, he would see at least one big fish convicted of corruption and behind bars.

Since the pace of justice is beyond his control, he may have to settle for seeing his predecessor and three senators, including one of the architects of martial law, held without bail for plunder during his watch.

He may also have to settle for having a chief justice and ombudsman ousted during his watch. And the Supreme Court, probably taking a cue from him, has also kicked out a justice of the Sandiganbayan for consorting with a suspected plunderer.

P-Noy’s allies and prosecutors, always gung-ho in going after political rivals, are pussyfooting around administration officials who are accused of improprieties. Presumption of innocence is invoked in such cases, but when it’s a member of the opposition, the person is guilty until he can prove his innocence.

The double standard has compounded perceptions that the administration has taken a detour from the straight path.

If P-Noy is no longer interested in a second term, who is his “anointed” successor? Obviously P-Noy isn’t referring to his VP when he says it should be someone who can carry on his work.

The danger in this kind of endorsement is that after six years, Pinoys are typically tired of the same approaches and are ready to be shown a different path. And when P-Noy says we should vote for more of the same, there are people who will see paralysis in the ports that is driving up consumer prices, railway trains that keep breaking down, airports that can’t operate at night, a crime surge, and no end to red tape, extortion and kickbacks.

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In choosing our next leader, we have to look at what our neighbors have achieved in the past 40 years. While we continue to grow, others have done better. We have fallen from being the region’s second best performer to being the laggard in almost all human development indicators.

We have to find someone who can rise above partisan considerations and rally Filipinos to compete not with each other but with the world.

We need someone with vision, whose long-term plans for national progress can survive leadership changes every six years, regardless of political affiliation.

This is one of the strengths of post-Mao China. The central government lays out targets coinciding with leadership changes every 10 years, apart from longer-term objectives, with detailed plans for achieving the targets within specified periods.

So far the approaching 2016 presidential race is focused on the negative, with potential candidates hoping to shine not by emphasizing whatever virtues or plans they might have but by slinging mud at their rivals.

Fidel Ramos grasped the idea in his push for a so-called Team Philippines. With the 2016 race shaping up to be a bitter one aimed at mutual annihilation, this kind of national team spirit looks unlikely.

Whichever camp rises to power in 2016, it looks like we’ll be stuck with myopic, partisan governance, with national interest an afterthought.