Dumb

Frankly, I don’t see why anyone should speculate on Mar Roxas’ motives for suggesting that P-Noy seek a second term. There’s really no mystery there. He doesn’t want P-Noy to have a second term, he wants to have a second term.

You heard that right.

But let’s begin at the beginning.

At long last, it has dawned on him he cannot win if he runs for president in 2016. This is by far the clearest sign he has admitted it. If he had a crack at the presidency, he would not have thought to propose the idea of P-Noy running again, he would have done it himself. His proposition not quite incidentally doesn’t do his President a service not just because his President has already repeatedly rejected it, but also because his President only recently got into a row with the Supreme Court, which saw his enemies depict him as being prone to violate the Constitution. Roxas has less than a couple of years left to announce his presidential bid. The time for coyness is over, the opposition is rampaging all over the place.

Of course the Liberal Party continues to say that Roxas is “their man,” there is no other. And of course Roxas himself insists that he is the only person P-Noy could have been referring to when he exhorted the citizens to make sure they voted for the one candidate who will faithfully, resolutely, unswervingly, carry on his mission and vision of the daang matuwid. But all that sounds a lot like whistling in the dark.

At the very least that is because P-Noy could very well have explicitly named him but did not. However P-Noy has dropped broad hints it is probably him, he has not named him. Which can only fuel speculation P-Noy himself is having second thoughts about him in light of his numbers, which are not only not rising but falling. In comparison in particular—which is the only comparison that matters—with his archrival, Jojo Binay.

At the very most that is because P-Noy’s sisters clearly have a different referent in mind when he exhorted the voters to pick the one person guaranteed to pursue the transformation of the nation. They have indicated their preference for Roxas’ archenemy, Binay, in not very uncertain terms. Even allowing for the Binay camp turning P-Noy’s sisters’ comments into a categorical endorsement—thus far, only Kris Aquino has taken it to that level—none of it can be comforting to Roxas.

That turns P-Noy’s silence about his anointed into a roar. Roxas is banking solely on that endorsement to skyrocket him into contention. But the longer it takes for it to come, the wider the gap between him and Binay gets. He is not operating on a vacuum, life does not stop while he waits for his situation to improve. He is in competition with other people, and a lot can happen while he waits. The not-very-veiled preference of P-Noy’s sisters for Binay over him is one of them. Others could, and probably would, follow, but I can’t imagine any of them being more crushing than P-Noy’s own kin’s rejection of him.

That puts the LP in a horrendously unenviable state.  How do they get out of the quandary of having a standard bearer that has no stout shoulders to bear the standards? How do they assure their continuity amid the specter of impending ruination? How do they avoid the historical trend of ruling parties ending up by the wayside since Marcos’ time?

That’s even truer for Roxas. By now, given the adversities pressing on him on all sides, he would have realized that his presidential cause is lost. How does he keep his party afloat, which is the key to keeping himself afloat? How does he keep his privileged, indeed pampered, position intact? How does he assure the salad days will not end soon?

By getting P-Noy to run again.

It’s not really that he wants P-Noy to have a second term, it’s that he does. It’s not an ungainly way to put it, is an accurate way to put it.

More than anybody else, it is Roxas who stands to lose everything in a debacle at the polls. P-Noy himself isn’t interested in a second term even if he could have it. The reluctance he had running for president in 2010 is increased tenfold by the prospect of running again. He doesn’t need the power, he doesn’t need the glory, or at least the wealth. He can give them up. Not so Roxas.

Roxas is the biggest beneficiary of P-Noy’s victory in 2010, not unlike Gloria Arroyo who was the biggest beneficiary of Edsa II’s triumph in 2001. Both did not deserve it, Arroyo simply happening to be vice president at the time, Roxas simply being the would-be president who slid to being a would-be vice president at that time. Alas, he would not be vice president. But so only in name, not so in fact.

Even before he officially became head of the Department of Transportation and Communications—he had to wait for a year before becoming part of the Cabinet—he was already second-in-command to P-Noy. He was there when the President visited the United States in his first year without any official function but somehow managed—the story is that he “borrowed” the , identity of Armin Luistro, the education secretary—to join the presidential entourage at the United Nations when P-Noy spoke.

Subsequently, he would be on top of everything despite being just one of the secretaries. A thing he failed to capitalize on, scoring losses rather than gains in the Napoles case (“Ma’am Janet”), the Zamboanga siege (he was indecisive until P-Noy came over and ordered the army to attack), the aftermath of “Yolanda” (his handling of Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez). Little wonder his political stock hasn’t catapulted, it has plunged.

Little wonder too he wants P-Noy to run again. That is the only way he can have a second term. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Alas, some desperate measures are more desperate than others.

Some are even less than desperate, they’re just dumb.