Pizza slices

First, a shout out to the management of the South Luzon Expressway: Kindly call the attention of the people in charge of the C-5/SLEX toll booth who always open a counterflow lane for their RFID users during the morning rush hour to C-5 but always forget to close the lane after 10 a.m. Making a counterflow lane at the tollbooth means that RFID users going south lose one out of two booths to pass through. To make matters worse, the counter flow lane is also one of only two lanes available to vehicles coming from C-5 who are left with only one lane up to the afternoon because those in charge of the booth are TOO LAZY to monitor and do their job! Their scanners are also so slow that we get passed up by non-RFID users!

The same goes for those maintaining the RFID gates at the Calamba toll booth where it is faster to get through without an RFID. Approximately three cars pass by before the bar rises to let a car with RFID through.

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Yes you want one, so do most of us.

That is what makes “pizza slices” the perfect example in promoting federalism in the Philippines. We all want a piece of the political power and a right to run our affairs. We can all pretend to have rediscovered our nationalism and cleverly recall all the great lines from “Heneral Luna,” but as the movie suggests we are a nation of family and business interests. The mere fact that many Filipinos are now at a loss on who to choose as president teaches us two things: there is no single ideal and qualified candidate and there are too many private interests that cannot be met by one president.

That is why the pizza slices came to mind. A pizza pie usually has 6 or 8 slices and that is roughly the number of “serious” presidential candidates we now have on the leaders board. But as many Filipinos agree, none of them qualify as the perfect leader especially as an experienced and unifying leader for the entire archipelago. All of those in the running are simply senators or professional politicians who don’t have real first hand experience at managing a real organization such as Metro Manila, a province, much less the country. Some may lay claim to executive experience by virtue of a cabinet title but won’t pass as genuine hands-on executives. They are lawyer-lawmakers at best or political investigators.

It has been suggested time and again that if we are to have good presidents, they must come from an executive background as mayors moving up to governors then running for president. The one perfect spot to grow wings as president would be as Governor especially of Metro Manila, but several presidents have suppressed or opposed the thought of reviving the Office of the Metro Manila Governor simply believing that anything authored or created by Ferdinand or Imelda Marcos is evil.

Instead, the presidents that followed have taken over the office and kept the power to themselves. This is the one simple reason why Metro Manila is an urban disaster: Someone is in-charge but not discharging the functions. One cannot be president of the Republic and govern Metro Manila by delegation.

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Delay is not denial and if things continue the way they have been going, chances are Davao Mayor Digong Duterte will end up merely delaying but not permanently denying his call to be president. My hunch is that Duterte will end up being the much needed “fire extinguisher” people will be running to once Grace Poe, Jejomar Binay and even Miriam Defensor Santiago all end up in the fiery furnace of disqualification, imprisonment and “psychological incapacity.”

Judging from what candidates and analysts themselves are saying, the enemies of Grace Poe will move heaven and earth and a lot of millions of pesos to kick her out of the presidential race. But that is not all. Some actually want her out even in the Senate in order to make sure that she is burned at the stake of humiliation just like Joan of Arc. If they take her out of the Senate the belief is she is automatically out of the presidential race.

My view on this is they want to remove Grace from the Senate just to make sure that she has no platform to wreak vengeance upon Mar Roxas et al if Roxas wins. If history repeats itself, Grace Poe may end up becoming the second coming of Miriam Defensor Santiago who became the scourge on Fidel Ramos’ back in a time past. Tita Miriam on the other hand probably knows what to expect from her opponents given how she suddenly had a flood of critics and challengers all asking about her physical health and mental state. Barely a week after announcing her candidacy, she is suddenly confronted with a wave of “Marcos haters.”

As far as VP Binay is concerned he is certain that he will be escorted to his jail cell just before Christmas so that the present administration won’t have to deal with accusations of being merciless. A pre-campaign arrest would also ruin any chance of Binay to overcome the odds. If things go this way, we will have three candidates thrown into the fiery furnace just like the time of Daniel the Prophet where the three did not burn to death but were joined by a fourth one who ultimately saved them.

Forgive the irreverent comparison but Digong Duterte may be strategically waiting it out until there is no other choice but for the three to consolidate their supporters and funds behind him because of his appeal plus sense and style of justice and fair play. By December it would be too late or difficult for the administration operatives to mount a campaign to paint Duterte as a human rights violator and undertake a serious campaign to charge him with multiple counts of human rights violations. Once the Christmas season is over, the campaign goes into full swing and it will be hard for the Roxas camp to fight a five-way battle versus Binay, Poe, Miriam, Duterte, and campaign for the presidency.

With so much time, my views are certainly as long shot or speculative as others, but the long shot that scores is what often changes the game and that I think is what we will all be praying for once we get fed up with the “election by disqualification” strategy being mounted by some people.