EDITORIAL - Time to ask the tough questions

There are only two declared presidential candidates so far -- DILG secretary Mar Roxas of the Liberal Party and Vice President Jejomar Binay of the United Nationalist Alliance. But there are three others who, in walk and talk, also appear all but declared candidates -- senators Grace Poe and Bongbong Marcos, and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

But whether two or three or five or even more, Filipinos are already all agog over next year's presidential election. Filipinos eat politics for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and for snacks in-between. But there is nothing like a presidential election to whet the appetite. And so, this early, while not one presidential aspirant has actually filed a certificate of candidacy, the deadline being still a good two months away, Filipinos are already in a stupor over 2016.

But for all our obsessive interest in politics, we remain largely immature in our approach to it. And this is quite ironic considering that the Philippines remains mired in the old habits of the past, habits that need political will to kick, in a kicking that involves real honest to goodness political reforms. But one look at how we play the game shows just how puerile our politics really is.

Just look at the requirements we impose on any candidate, and for president, no less. Actually it is not requirements because there is only one that everybody is looking at -- the capacity to win. Nobody is even asking whether a candidate is a person or a horse. Okay, pardon the hyperbole, but that speaks eloquently of the situation as it is. Filipinos are engrossed by a candidate's ability to win. Nobody is asking about plain old ability as it is.

Had Filipinos matured in their politics, now would have been the proper time to start asking the tough questions of the presidential aspirants. In fact, one does not have to ask all the questions there are. It is possible to discern ability by just asking a few questions about some of the real issues likely to confront the new leader who emerges in 2016.

For example, Filipinos should already be asking each of the five potential aspirants what they intend to do with four concerns that are not likely to go away anytime soon -- the Bangsamoro problem, the South China Sea issue, the runaway crime in the country, the sweeping drug problem. They might even add the highly controversial matters as K to 12 and same sex marriage.

But almost no one is asking these questions of the candidates. And the candidates, obsessed only with winning just as the rest of the Filipinos are, all too happily oblige the omission by not volunteering their own ideas or plans regarding these issues. Pretty soon the elections will be upon us and another vicious cycle will come into play -- a winner who underperforms, being criticized for underperformance by a people for whom performance never mattered at a time when it should have.