When President-elect Barack Obama won the US Presidential derby a week ago and became the first Black American to become the US President, we immediately got text jokes that the Philippines too will soon have a “Black” President in the person of Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay. Well, it turned out that Mayor Binay took the bait, hook, line and sinker and suddenly made a declaration during his 66th birthday the other day that he is running for President of the Philippines in the 2010 Presidential elections.
Binay’s supporters went to his birthday bash carrying placards comparing him to Barack Obama, all because of his dark skin. That’s where the similarity ends. Mr. Binay is no Obama, who fought for change in America. What is Mr. Binay fighting for, except to grab the helm at Malacañang? Obama was a first term Senator, while Binay is an old political animal.
Mayor Binay’s sudden declaration proves to us once and for all that the multi-party system in place in this country since the 1987 Cory Constitution doesn’t give us political stability because it allows a pool of Presidentiables. Whoever wins the Presidential race becomes a minority President. When we have a minority President, he or she instantly becomes an unpopular ruler because the majority of the electorate voted for other Presidential candidates.
Binay’s half-hearted (he also said that he was willing to run for Vice-President) entry into the Presidential derby adds one more name into the list that grows ever longer. Aside from Binay, we have Senate President Manny Villar, Vice-Pres. Noli de Castro, Sen. Manuel Roxas, Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Bayani Fernando, Sen. Loren Legarda, and Sen. Richard “Dick” Gordon. This brings the list of Presidentiables to seven hopefuls. Granted that we’ll end up with five Presidential finalists for the 2010 elections, that number is still too much.
Again, we’re sounding the call for the return to the two-political-party system that the Marcos Dictatorship threw out in 1972 when he threw out the best Constitution we’ve ever had. Back to Mr. Binay. He got a lot of comment from friends and foe, but Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, perhaps gave the best analysis of his declaration, giving out a hearty laugh at what she believes is a ridiculous decision. For once, I fully agree with her!
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It’s bad enough that we are suffering from the incompetence of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez who has been sitting on so many celebrated cases waiting perhaps for heaven to fall on her lap. Not only are we seeing incompetence in her office, she is also having a serious rift between her and Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio whom she has relieved simply because the latter has not been submitting updates on the case he is holding.
What is good for the gander should also be good for the goose. So now we turn the tables on Ombudsman Gutierrez who too has failed to give us taxpayers any updates on the celebrated cases that we’ve long wanted to know from her office. For the sake of transparency, may we ask from the Office of the Ombudsman the status of the numerous cases that was filed in Office of the Ombudsman Visayas?
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The blackbox:
In case you’re doing some shopping at SM, I suggest that you go to the SM Art Centre and Full Circle exhibit of Cebu’s foremost artist, Celso Duazo Pepito who is holding the final exhibit in his 2nd Traveling Exhibit there that began yesterday. Last year, he held exhibits at the Golden Cowrie Restaurant, then at the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA), the Rosevale School in Cagayan de Oro City, the Philippine Heart Center. The end of this series is at the SM Art Centre from Nov.12-25.
Celso Pepito is an impressionist-realist painter who studied under the great Cebuano painter Maestro Martino Abellana (who was a student of Filipino National Artist Fernando Amorsolo). Last week, I had the honor of featuring him with other Cebuano artists on my tv show Straight from the Sky in our first series called “Gallery from the Sky”. Like his masters before him, Celso Pepito is sharing his God’s gifts to other talented Cebuanos.
Another Cebuano artist, Ritchie Quijano, tells us that Celso Pepito believes that, “Art is not only about beauty but goes beyond it.” With artists like Celso Pepito doing traveling shows, he is showing to the rest of the world that Cebuano artists are world class painters.