The advent of a new year transforms everyone into an optimist. It’s a time when we look past the dark clouds that brought disappointments in the year that just passed, which also threaten to envelop the incoming year with billows of tribulation. We always hold on to hopes that the fresh year will bring winds of change.
There will always be milestones that will bring cheer in our homes, circle of friends, and workplaces in any given year. But what about our badly battered republic? With all the unending and very critical problems that beset our nation, year in and year out, can we still entertain hopes of better times for our country at the onset of a new year?
Imbued with the spirit of optimism that permeates the air, I tried to make a list of the sources of optimism for our country for the year 2025. It’s a hard task to come up even with a very short list, mind you. The task is no different from looking for a needle in a haystack. Nevertheless, I managed to find three needles that our country can use to weave a better tapestry of the future for our country.
First on my list is the upcoming elections in May 2025. Many readers would laugh at the suggestion that the forthcoming elections can inspire optimism. After all, with the latest survey results, I’m sure that many voters view almost all of those in the winning circle of 12 senatorial candidates as dark lords who will speed up our country’s fall into the abyss. Besides, a supermajority of congressional and local candidates, who have bigger chances of winning, will not be agents of change but overlords of the status quo.
However, the forces of perdition will prevail with overwhelming results only if they are allowed to win by default—that is without a spirited fight from those who yearn for change. Those who aspire for change must duplicate the kind of vigor demonstrated by voters in the 2022 elections who wagered time, talent, and resources in support of their dream candidate, despite facing the formidable “UniTeam” that eventually prevailed. Besides, the realistic aspiration is not to dream of electing—in a single electoral exercise—a majority of candidates who will be advocates of change. We must be realistic enough to accept that the climb out of the hole that our country is in right now, will be one electoral step at a time. A single Risa Hontiveros accomplished feats that pushed the Senate to become a fiscalizer and a truth-seeker in several crucial initiatives. Imagine the kind of Senate we will have if we elect two to three more of Hontiveros’ kind. That’s an achievable goal that should engender optimism and goad us into action in the upcoming elections.
We need more boisterous and quarrelsome minority legislators in the House of Representatives. There would be justified optimism in this regard if we, who dream of change, can group ourselves together and deliver chunks of votes to elect more party list representatives who will not dance the boogie-woogie when pork barrel funds are dangled before their eyes.
Second on my list is the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte. The thoughts, utterances, misbehavior, and misdeeds that she has demonstrated show clearly that she is unfit to continue as our nation’s second-highest official, and to succeed to the presidency if something untoward happens to the President. VP Sara’s successful impeachment will stop our country from sliding back to the very dark period of her father’s rule. But then again, for the impeachment to succeed, we will need an electorate that will threaten and be ready to mount the kind of revolution that made the impeachment of former president Joseph Estrada a fait accompli in 2001.
Third and last on my list is the potential issuance of an arrest warrant for former president Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Even by his own admission, Duterte committed despicable crimes perpetrated against thousands of our poor. He must be made to answer for his heinous crimes before the ICC. We still don’t have the strength and maturity present in the interwoven functions of the political, social, and judicial institutions of advanced societies which enable them to ensure domestic accountability against their national leaders. We need the ICC to insulate our quest for justice from the inadequacies of our institutions.
The start of a new year is a time to indulge in daydreams. And doing so will empower us with visions of how to end our long nightmare, one new year at a time.
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