MY TWO CENTS’ – Going beyond debates: Exposing pretense and fraud (part 2)

Second pretense exposed: Mar Roxas and Jejomar Binay
Smarting from his self perceived “victory” in the first round of debates in Cagayan de Oro, Mar Roxas thought that he presented himself as the smart, well studied and decent choice for president. He took to giving lengthy answers with statistics. He also bared his irritation and temper when defending the current administration, even stating how proud he was of the current administration in spite of the admitted fact that shabu continues to be cooked inside the Bilibid prison by drug lords he successfully had arrested. Whether the Rappler editors thought this was an impressive display of leadership talent is anyone’s guess.  We give them the benefit of the doubt. What we need to remind ourselves is that the premise of periodic elections are not about who looks good as a candidate. The first question is whether the current administration is able to do its job. Everything else ought to follow.
Mayor Duterte’s booming response calling Mar Roxas a fraud is very telling for many who see the Mar Roxas candidacy as unraveling. This comes amid the recent decision to let his Vice Presidential running mate Leni Robredo campaign on her own, which to my mind is worrisome for the administration. It is possible that the LP leadership perceives Mar as a liability. As with Zamboanga, both he and Vice president Binay entered the fray only to exacerbate an already tense situation. Sadly, dealing with the MNLF in Zamboanga is nothing new for the government. It ought to have learned from two recent experiences such as the Camp Cawa-cawa and Cabtangan siege that took place in the city. A friend told me that Duterte only verbalized what many are afraid to say about Roxas in particular and the PNOY government in general. It just pains me to see that every time there is such a situation the government is a beehive of activity, not because there are great solutions brewing to resolve the conflict, but because characters like Mar roxas and Jejomar Binay are jostling for political points.
This is where, sadly, Jejomar Binay didn’t do well. He was unable to drive the discussion on this and probably intended to capitalize on the debate to answer allegations against him. Given his current circumstances, I and many others expected him to try to unravel Mar Roxas and the failures of the present administration so that he could differentiate himself and score some points. I guess he was exhausted from pushing his desire to bring notes or documents he lost the energy to focus on what he wanted to drive.  He seemed more concerned about how he and many others can
Mayor Duterte and Senator Poe, on the other hand, got this right, and it is that elections are always a referendum on how credible and effective a current government is, as embodied in the Tuwid na Daan slogan of the current administration. Poe got Roxas on the defensive about Mamasapano, an argument he will never win since he already has claimed not knowing about the operation in spite of his being DILG secretary in command of the SAF 44 troops. Not knowing and blaming others for what is clearly his responsibility brings out the discussion on other blunders, such as Yolanda and Zamboanga, where he has found it too difficult to dispel eyewitness accounts of his non-performance, and the ire of many in Mindanao who were slighted not only by his statement about “muslim mananakop”, but about allowing the MNLF to expand their siege under his watch, and publicly admitting to knowing nothing about the Mamasapano operation that was supposed to be under his watch.
Duterte cleverly exposed Mars weak points and temper, enabling him to admit that the Shabu kitchens in the Bilibid prisons are real, and that in spite of whatever gains Roxas may have made catching drug pushers, or playing around with drug and crime data of selected Philippine cities to try to make his opponents look bad, he already has forgotten that he was DILG Secretary in charge of removing such a menace, hanging out his own poor performance to dry. What damned him further was his governments blind eye on allowing the drug to be cooked inside prison. In his desire to make himself look decent, Roxas managed to say that he was proud of the current government in spite of the shabu kitchens that only increase the number of criminals to catch, and the recent tanim bala scandal that he seemed powerless to stop. Recent alliances made with jueteng lords the Pineda family, and the list of political dynasties in different regions including the Romualdos of Camiguin only cement the hypocrisy that is Tuwid na Daan. He obviously revealed the truth about his own and his governments performance and it is shameful. No spin can ever explain it away.
For Mar to say in his closing statement that it is about bringing back decent government is the icing on his cake, only that it spilled on the floor, and he slipped on it. It was not a repudiation of his opponents, it was an indictment of the administration he represents, and of himself. The grave scandal putting the current administration to shame is that it nominates its worst performer to succeed it.