EDITORIAL - Troubling, sobering signs

The unprovoked attack that Senator Jinggoy Estrada launched against former chief justice Hilario Davide has opened our eyes once more to the sorry state of Philippine political affairs, a state that does not augur well for our future as a nation.

To be sure, the privilege speech of Jinggoy was not without merit. It underscored a real awkwardness in Davide's position as head of a so-called truth commission tasked to go after former president Gloria Arroyo, whom he helped install, and later served upon his retirement.

But of course the noise made by Jinggoy also exposed his hypocritical streak. One would have thought the son of a convicted plunderer would not be a caster of the first stone. But there blustered Jinggoy, postured behind the dais like a rosy-cheeked cherubim.

Still, that we should be treated to such a spectacle only proves that real and meaningful changes are not about to fall onto our laps despite hopes generated by the huge mandate President Noynoy Aquino won in an election in which he ran on a platform of promised change.

Indeed it is sobering to note that in the same election Jinggoy's convicted plunderer father, former president Joseph Estrada, placed second behind Noynoy, trouncing the other, more qualified and relatively cleaner candidates. It was a vindication, any way you look at it.

Not only that, the same election also saw the Senate race topped by movie actor Bong Revilla, with Jinggoy himself breathing down his neck, beating such highly regarded luminaries as Miriam Defensor Santiago and Juan Ponce Enrile.

And guess who else made it in that same Senate race? Why, Bongbong Marcos, that's who. And does he even need any introduction? The same results were everywhere. Bongbong's mother Imelda made it as well. As did Ruben Ecleo Jr., who is on trial over the death of his wife.

To see such electoral results emerge from an exercise that has been widely acclaimed as the quickest, cleanest, and most credible in decades, cannot but seriously undermine the value of our choices, and what those choices truly say of us.

To have Noynoy win in the same election that also brought to power a slew of characters who are, if not the exact opposites of how people perceive Noynoy, inhabit their own grotesque universes, cannot but indict us all as a people who do not really know what they want.