Choice of election winners to be driven not by principles, conscience

“MARCOS VICTIMS vow to stop Bongbong bid” blared the Inquirer’s banner story last Feb. 23. Victims of the late Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorial rule made good their promise to remind everyone of the nightmare that the decades-long regime caused the nation. The nerve of the dictator’s son to even think he could fool the people by pretending that he did not know what his father and mother did!

The victims have started holding rallies to prevent the reemergence of a Marcos rule via the “backdoor.” “We will hound his campaign,” they declared. Indeed, if vice presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos is not stopped in May 2016, he and the entire Marcos clan may well be on their way to lording it over the country once more from Malacañang in 2022!

Never again?

But from all indications, the son’s rise seems unstoppable. From out of nowhere, Marcos is now neck and neck with Chiz Escudero in the vice presidential race, according to the latest surveys. Running as an independent and himself perceived to be bereft of moral scruples, Escudero will prove no match to the wealth, power and influence still held by the Marcoses despite their banishment from the country in 1986. The other veep wannabes, alas, seem headed nowhere.

Martial law victims can cry foul, weep and gnash their teeth all they want, but it is becoming more of a certainty that Bongbong Marcos will be the next vice president after the last ballot is counted in May 2016—and, of course, with Jejomar Binay, who has himself been topping most of the surveys, our next president in spite of all the unanswered charges of his allegedly having amassed billions of pesos in ill-gotten wealth!

Just think about it for a moment: With the majority of our people inexplicably hooked on and totally gone nuts over such idiocy as the “AlDub phenomenon” (which, as Broadway star Lea Salonga correctly pointed out, is nothing but “kababawan”), what else can anyone expect?

Those are the very same people who can make winners in any election, not the minority no matter how much driven they may be by principles and conscience! Proof? One of the “AlDub” godfathers/comedians, Tito Sotto, who has never distinguished himself as a senator during his previous terms, is now numero uno in the current senatorial race! Good Lord!

—ANGELI O. MARCONI, [email protected]