EDITORIAL - Good enough for the finisher's prize

How the tables have turned. When President Aquino first assumed the presidency, the air was rife with bold predictions of a country transformed, of a nation made prosperous by the absence of corruption. Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap. That was the slogan. Now in the final stages of his presidency, Aquino will be leaving a country much worse than it was, a nation even deeper in poverty with the institutionalization of corruption among Aquino cronies and allies.

Aquino will not be finishing his term on a high note. In fact he will be finishing it only because the people are allowing him to finish. It could have been very easy to drive him out of office. With only 15,208,678 people voting for him in 2010 as opposed to the 20,930,424 who voted for others, Aquino clearly did not have the majority mandate to shore him up when the going got rough.

Yet, interestingly, it is the majority of Filipinos, meaning the 20 million plus who did not vote for him, who are rejecting calls for Aquino to resign and are therefore saving him the ignominy of having to be driven from office. The majority of Filipinos do not wish to suffer from the folly of those who voted for a failed president.

Benefitting from the wisdom of those who saw through the folly, Aquino will thus be able to finish, not on the tide of some success, but on the accommodation of those who think outside the box. If this were high school – gipa-graduate na lang sa liningkuran. Finishing the president in this manner is not something to crow about. If the truth be told, it would have been more honorable to step down than finish on humanitarian grounds.

For the sins of Aquino are far more reprehensible than those of all the previous presidents. The common thread that lumped all of the previous presidents was unbridled corruption, fired by an insatiable need to acquire material wealth. With Aquino there are the far more sinister and complex sins like betrayal of the public trust, culpable violation of the constitution, and perhaps even treason – all impeachable offenses that have been ignored in favor of continuity and peace.

Aquino longs for a legacy, completely misunderstanding the requirements for leaving one. A legacy is something you do not pursue. A legacy is one that pursues you long after you have gone. A legacy does not come simply because you want it to. You have to earn it. How people appreciate legacy is often what distinguishes the great from the mediocre.

The great just do what inspires them from the heart. The mediocre never does anything without first looking for a legacy behind every corner. What a way indeed for Aquino to finish his term – not on the shoulders of the crowd chanting because they were proven right, but by his lonesome down the finish line, egged on to finish just for the sake of finishing.