If Grace Poe is ‘hilaw,’ what about Leni?

While the Philippine government is agog about the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation economies (APEC), last Tuesday, Energy officials from the APEC countries came up with the Cebu Ministerial Declaration, which contains proposals for climate-proofing of energy infrastructure and adopting advance energy efficiency technologies, promoting the use of clean energy in poverty stricken areas and improving energy trade and investments. To people like me who know many things, this Cebu Declaration is good for the nation because it provides a better hope for the future of the Filipino people.

 However for the man on the street who has been living in abject poverty all his life, this APEC Declaration is nothing but mambo-jambo. For them, they will never get out of that vicious cycle of poverty that they have learned to live with because the government failed to provide them the jobs they need. I guess the same thing can be said about our up and coming elections, where the intelligent voter is at a loss on whom they should vote for.

Last Wednesday morning, I got a text from a dear friend, Msgr. Vicente “Vet” Avila, parish priest of the St. Paul Metropolitan Cathedral in Vigan asking me a question that probably is being asked by the intelligentsia all over the country, “Whom shall we vote now? No one deserves our vote?” Of course I merely replied to Msgr. Avila (no relation to me) that since elections are still far, we’ll just have to wait who we should be choosing to lead our nation in the next six years. But for the Filipino masa, they are happy that this political circus is underway.

I earnestly tried to convince former Pres. Fidel V. Ramos (FVR) to make the ultimate sacrifice and serve our country once more, not as President for another six years, but rather to use those years as a means of getting reforms done for our country… the first of which is the biggest reform via Charter change of the 1987 Constitution that has put this nation into this political situation where political parties no longer work… because we are lost in personality politics. Alas, FVR didn’t take the bait.

We Filipinos are so pro-American that we copied the American system of governance… yet we did not copy its federal system. Our political party system has become a big joke, thanks to ignorant Filipino voters, the majority of whom live below the poverty line and therefore cannot exercise critical thinking and only choose political candidates who are the most popular, even if they are notoriously popular. A case in point is that former Navy Ensign, now Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, whose messianic thoughts continue to permeate his brain…, which is why he is running for vice president.

Right now, we have presidential candidates, whom people know are honest, but they are far from ready to take the responsibility of a higher office. Remember how the Yellow propagandists from Malacañang tried to belittle the candidacy of Sen. Grace Poe, by calling her “hilaw”? Hmmm but when Liberal Party (LP) presidential bet Manuel “Mar” Roxas took in Rep. Leni Robredo as his vice presidential running mate, suddenly they stopped calling Grace Poe “hilaw” because if Sen. Grace Poe is “hilaw” what does that make of Rep. Leni Robredo…”hilawer?”

I like Leni Robredo, but I have only loathing for the Liberal Party for the way they treated her husband, the late DILG Sec. Jesse Robredo, who was bypassed by the Commission on Appointments (CA) many times until his sudden demise. Obviously, even Pres. Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III did not lift a finger (at that time when both houses of Congress were literally in his pocket) to get that permanent appointment for Sec. Robredo.

But when he crashed into the sea in Masbate, suddenly the Yellow propagandists lionized Jesse
 Robredo, giving him a State funeral, but then his undersecretary Rico Puno had his minions ransack the office of Robredo as if he was hiding something. Now the same folks at the LP is now using Leni Robredo as their “deodorant” hoping that she would give some kind of balance to the incompetence that Sec. Mar Roxas has shown to the Filipino people in the last five years.

But whether he likes it or not, Mar Roxas has not gone up in the ratings (except their own) because he sounds like the parrot of Pres. PNoy Aquino, espousing their slogan “Daang Matuwid” which for many Filipinos find so nauseating that it would be the same for the next six-years under Mar Roxas Presidency. Meanwhile, things are getting interesting with the entry of the feisty Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago into this political rat race.

While Maid Miriam maybe a breath of fresh air in this bevy of neophytes, incompetents and corrupt Presidential bets, however she has a huge baggage to carry and that’s her health. Now whether she has licked her cancer is something we’d like to find out. But her bigger political baggage is her staunch belief in that divisive issue called Reproductive Health Law, which she supported to the hilt against the wishes of the Catholic Church.

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