Teasers

For her closing statement in the first presidential debate last Sunday, Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago made the pitch that Filipino voters should choose as their next leader someone distinguished for his or her brains, competence and integrity. The president must have been the head of class or at least an honor student, she said, and must also have been honored by his or her peers and, above all, must display moral excellence. “Dapat ang binoboto walang bahid sa record, kung may inimbento ’di kapanipaniwala (Vote for someone whose record is not tainted by untruths).”

Like all candidates in the business of selling themselves to the electorate, Santiago was highlighting for the voters’ attention what she believes are her greatest attributes, those that distinguish her from the other four aspirants onstage. And, fair enough, she does happen to be an academic whiz, with a creditable track record of competent stints in all three branches of government as judge, Cabinet secretary and legislator at one time or another.

But her ringing call for integrity—for the need to choose someone untarnished by acts of fabrication and dishonesty as a basic requirement for national leadership—is immediately checked by an inconvenient truth: her choice of running mate in Sen. Bongbong Marcos. The unrepentant scion of the Marcos dictatorship has owned up to fabricating his college records, for one; for another, despite court records and papers to the contrary, and the fact that his own mother has admitted to it on more than one occasion, he has refused to acknowledge, much less apologize for, the existence of his family’s illegally acquired wealth.

Santiago’s preferred candidate to succeed her in the event that she is incapacitated for the presidency is a man who promotes make-believe Philippine history, where no human rights abuses ever happened, the institutions of government were not destroyed by one-man rule, and an economy progressively run to the ground was on its way to becoming another Singapore. That basic contradiction in her much-touted advocacy for clean government was evident from the day she announced her ironic pick for running mate. In the face of a public outcry, she doubled down on her choice by saying that, in effect, martial law wasn’t all bad (“the Marcos family has nothing to apologize for”), and that the sins of the father should not be visited on the son.

But on Sunday Santiago was not called out on such a contradiction; there was no opportunity to, and her statement went unchallenged, rendered as a mere sound bite more than anything else in the end.

And there were many claims by the candidates that cried out for plain follow-up: for example, former transportation secretary Mar Roxas sidestepping the question of his inept handling of the MRT mess, by fuzzily saying new trains have arrived, anyway, and are about to be deployed—right by the time the buzzer sounded and the moderators moved on to the next candidate; or Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte repeating his promise to continue killing criminals but “within the law”—with no one reminding him that the Constitution itself, which he would swear to on his first day of office once elected president, expressly prohibits the very summary executions he favors and promotes.

When Vice President Jejomar Binay intoned that the economic programs he boasts to have fine-tuned in Makati could help uplift the rest of the country, a question about the hordes of poor and homeless families that still haunt the city’s side streets, perhaps accompanied by a picture or two, would have easily challenged the rosy statement. And when Sen. Grace Poe promised extensive agricultural redevelopment as a linchpin of her administration, Santiago got to ask where the funds for it would come from—but once again, the damned buzzer nipped the opportunity to elaborate on one more important point.

There are two more presidential face-offs before the May polls. For that critical vote, the electorate needs a more comprehensive look at the five candidates’ programs, qualifications—and contradictions—than teaser talking points.