Vacuum

The President, of course, didn’t specifically mention him. But he gave the broadest hints of who he was. Or at least the latter’s loyal followers, or hangers-on, in Malacañang, gave the world to think so. “He,” of course, is Mar Roxas.

He is P-Noy’s chosen, or looks it. P-Noy’s hints were fairly broad. In his speech in Iloilo City, he pointed out that Roxas had pushed the line of the daang matuwid along with him in the 2010 campaign. “Two years from now, we will again pick someone to carry on what we’ve started. I urge you not to deviate. Otherwise, if we go our separate ways, we will not achieve our collective goal.”

That’s as broad a hint as it gets, and the only reason P-Noy wasn’t more explicit was that he was probably reserving it for next month when he delivers his State of the Nation Address. That is, depending on how it will be received by the public. Which, apart from Roxas’ loyalists in the Liberal Party and the government, will be with a universal groan.

P-Noy can’t do worse than this. It’s so for several compelling reasons.

First, and most obvious, is that Roxas can’t win. The equation is simple and inescapable. Roxas couldn’t win as vice president when he was leading by a mile, courtesy of P-Noy himself whose widespread acceptance thrust him (Roxas) to the stratosphere. He can’t possibly win as president when he is lagging behind by a mile, notwithstanding P-Noy’s unrelenting, and incomprehensible, loyalty to him. Oh, yes, loyalty. It’s not Roxas who is loyal to P-Noy, it’s P-Noy who is loyal to Roxas.

That by itself is fairly inconsequential. Who cares if Roxas loses, which he is destined to do? Destiny being, as they rightly say, a matter not of fate but of character: Roxas has a natural talent for pissing off people he comes in contact with. It is hot-wired in his brain. What is consequential, however, is what happens to P-Noy, and the daang matuwid, by this choice, particularly once it is made open and unequivocal. No amount of P-Noy’s trumpeting of Roxas’ virtues is going to change the public’s perception of him.

Ironically, P-Noy’s (as yet) implicit anointment of Roxas to preserve the gains he has arguably made, not least the daang matuwid, is the surest assurance he will scuttle the gains he has arguably made, chief of them the daang matuwid. His anointed loses and his gains will be lost, or be mightily pushed back. Indeed, even before that, the perception that P-Noy will go all-out for someone who is widely seen as a loser, in more ways than one, will make P-Noy out to be so, too. That is the only thing that is transferable here, not

P-Noy’s popularity rubbing off on Roxas. His credibility will suffer a bigger blow than it did last year at the height of the antipork protests. His last two years will add whole new dimensions to being a sitting-duck president, being seen as one who has no successor, no continuity, no lasting legacy.

Second, and more importantly, Roxas isn’t exactly the knight in shining armor P-Noy believes him to be. Again, who cares if Roxas can’t win? The question is: “Should he win?”

In the past, I’ve railed again and again against the concept of “winnability,” saying that the only “winnability” that ought to matter in elections is who you think should win. You vote for the candidate you think should win, you win whether he wins or not. You vote for the candidate you think can win, you lose whether he wins or not. That was the principle I embraced when I went for Jovito Salonga in 1992 and for Raul Roco in 1998 and 2004. Everybody was telling me they couldn’t win, but where I stood, who the hell cared? I thought they should win, and still do.

Which brings me to Roxas. Is he the poster boy for the daang matuwid? How can he be so when several high-ranking officials of the Department of Transportation and Communications, an office he used to head officially and an office he continues to head unofficially, have figured in corruption scandals, one of them specifically accused by the Czech ambassador of trying to extort $30 million from a Czech company? And who are still there?

Indeed, how can he be so when he stands in the way of government going beyond Bong Revilla, Jinggoy Estrada, and Juan Ponce Enrile to merely investigate, never mind indict, Butch Abad and Proceso Alcala? More than P-Noy himself, Roxas is the one responsible for the government’s instinct, or reflex, to draw the line at allies, which means members of the Liberal Party, which he heads. I’ve said it before: The jailing of the three senators is a good starting point, but it is not a good ending point. The lessons to be learned from it won’t be learned if it groans from the weight of selective justice, which will get heavier over time if the justice stops there.

And finally, there’s not a democratic bone in Roxas’ body. Just look at how he berated Alfred Romualdez in the aftermath of “Yolanda.” How can you have a democratic bone in your body when you consider yourself God’s gift to life? Roxas can’t abide a dissenting opinion. Certainly, he can’t abide an opinion, dissenting or otherwise, from the que asco masa. P-Noy was loath to listen to the antipork protesters? Imagine what Roxas will be.

Being democratic isn’t just a value unto itself, though that is as supreme a value as you can have in a president. It is also related to fighting corruption. Government alone can’t stop corruption, it needs the help of the people to do so. How can you get that help if the last thing you want to do is listen to them, never mind hear them? You don’t have a democratic bone in your body, you won’t just foment repression, you’ll foment corruption. Look at Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and despair. Look at Mar Roxas, and do the same thing.

Two years left for P-Noy, and we’re still in the dark. We’re still in a vacuum.