Ambition and all-knowing bets

Butch Bagabuyo

“If you want to reach the highest, begin at the lowest.” – Syrus, Maxims

AMONG the four leading “presidentiables,” the foundling is clearly out of the race. It’s not only because the 1987 Constitution defines who are natural-born citizens–and a foundling is not one of them–but because she is too ambitious yet sorely lacking in experience in governance.

As I have previously written in this column, had she been humble enough to accept her lack of experience in governance, she would have easily been a sure winner for the vice presidency. But because most Filipinos agree that the exalted office of the presidency in our country is providential (not a destiny), she is now in hot water and her disqualification based on the 1987 Constitution is but a matter of time.

But the teeming millions of poor Filipinos can only hope and pray that our Supreme Court comes out with an immediately executory decision before the Comelec prints the official ballots for the May 9, 2016 elections even as a good many frown over the the Commission’s timetable on the printing of official ballots.

The Supreme Court owes it to the Filipino people.

Like it or not, our man, Davao Mayor Rodrigo “Super Digong” Duterte in tandem with Sen. Alan Cayetano–the only team where both the presidential and the vice presidential bets need each other–will come out the winning team by a landslide based on these uncontested facts:

• During the last 80 long and excruciating years that our country has had national elections, this is the very first time that a Mindanaoan candidate is included as a viable presidential candidate of a duly recognized political party, the PDP-Laban of the late President Cory. Not only that, Duterte is the frontrunner, and is trending in the surveys.
• Since the start of the elections in 1935 until the ruthless dictator from the north, Ferdinand E. Marcos, whimsically changed the rules, in all presidential tandems, it was always a North and South team but always excluding Mindanao, except at the height of our illustrious statesman from Mindanao, the late Vice President Emmanuel N. Pelaez, the man known as the best president the Philippines never had. Of the 15 elected Presidents, 12 came from Luzon of Imperial Manila, and three from the Visayas with only 10 million voters. There was none from Mindanao, the second largest island of the archipelago, approximately six times bigger than City-State Singapore and the breadbasket of our country with commanding votes of 12.5 million.
• Of the five presidential candidates, only Duterte is the true clamor by the people. He is, in fact, the only hesitant presidential candidate because he lacks funds by choice. He has been offered huge financial backing by business tycoons but despite his lack of personal funds to run a national campaign, “Mr. Punisher” has politely turned them all down. However, only the Duterte-Cayetano team, and none other, has an umbrella organization of volunteers-in-deed (ordinary people who have deemed it necessary to contribute what little they have to produce what they deemed as the required warm bodies), who meet regularly on a weekly basis to find ways and means to unify and strengthen the various people’s organizations into an effective tools for victory.
• Of the four viable presidential-vice presidential teams, only Duterte has dared the Filipino people not to vote for him if they would not vote for his vice presidential choice, an equally brave and intellectual Sen. Cayetano of the North. The other presidential bets are trembling at the thought of challenging the voters not to vote for them if they would not vote for their respective vice presidential candidate.
• This is the only presidential derby where both candidates of the administration and opposition–Mar Roxas and the erstwhile leading opposition party UNA of Vice President Jejomar Binay–have to beg if not, buy for hefty sums in the tune of millions of reasons, their vice presidential candidates. What is even more unpalatable if not laughable, is the allegation by certain political spin doctors that a vice presidential candidate from the North panicked when our man did not file his certificate of candidacy for the presidency during the original deadline; his stress was such that millions of reasons were advanced to convince a sick person to run for the President.
• Only the Duterte-Cayetano team and none other has pledged that they will, without fail, change governance in our country within six months, from the worn-out-scandalidden presidential type to the only system where every state is sovereign yet within a federal form of government, thereby spreading and ensuring progress to every state in accordance with its own work-style or constitution. It would be unlike today when only Imperial Manila syphons off all the resources and gives back to the locals crumbs befitting second-class citizens if not, beggars.
• Finally, the Duterte-Cayetano tandem is the only team-up where the teeming millions of the poor are encouraged and empowered by joining our hand-to-mouth-generosity to ensure overwhelming victory for the charismatic and men of the hour Duterte-Cayetano tandem.

Du30-Cayetano pa more!

Tsada, di ba?

• •

“From listening comes wisdom, and from speaking repentance.” – Italian Proverb

Where it not for PNoy’s audacity and natuwad nga dalan of selective justice and prosperity only for his cronies, the administration candidates of the Liberal party today would not have been placed in the same sinking ship of now detained former President GMA. And because both PNoy and GMA are children of former presidents, they have the same weakness: all-knowing and never-listening.