No presidential election after PNoy’s term nears its mandated end?

By CHITO DELA TORRE
April 4, 2013

Just this week, avid friends of QN began eyeing on the 2016 presidential elections. Each has his own early guess of who most likely will run for president, to succeed the incumbent – “if election does happen,” says one.

Well, here was an early speculation that the next presidential election will not come about! What? No, the speculator did not mean that incumbent President Noynoy Aquino will declare a third martial law (the first was declared by Pres. Elpidio Quirino, and the second, by Pres. Ferdinand Marcos. He explained from his own readings of the intertwining issues besetting Philippine society today, that some constitutional processes, via congress, will make that happen.

Of the possible candidates for president, named by QN’s friends were incumbent Vice-Pres. Jejomar Binay, Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, and senators Bongbong Marcos and Chiz Escudero.

The mention of Bongbong and Chiz surprised everyone. To this circle of intellectuals, mostly professionals (doctors, educators, and lawyers) while others are either fresh college graduates who made good leadership records in their own campuses during their studentry years and businessmen, Bongbong will be a strong contender and Chiz will accede teaming up with him. In fact at least two unidentical national movements, as early as 2011, are campaigning for a Marcos-Escudero tandem, via the internet.

So, how come Chiz will be Bongbong’s rival? The ideator offered the strong explanation that PNoy will get Chiz into the Liberal Party, and, anticipating an overwhelming Escudero victory in the May, 2013 polls on the strength of an LP powerhouse team which will most likely send most of their bets to the Senate, PNoy will hold on to that and proceed with a series of anchor infrastructure and coconut industry projects in the Bicol region in order to power up an acclamation for Chiz from among the Bicolanos themselves.

That region will then become PNoy’s strongest bailiwick, because the rebels there will stand up as one for PNoy once that region starts by 2014 becoming the newest center of megastructures – including a boost to the reinvigoration of the shipping industry there that will facilitate the influencing power of the coconut industry, a move that the previous administrations, since the time of Fidel Ramos missed looking at very seriously.

The rebels, in a way, will benefit gradually from that innovative move. The choice of Chiz as PNoy’s bet for the presidency will diametrically frustrate all efforts of Bongbong. Even Bongbong will see that as a brilliant move.

Bongbong’s Ilocos Norte will no longer enjoy its claims for further economic prowess and that therefore, that province will lose a big platter of electoral support which will come from Bicolano voters. Bongbong will also be seeing the acrid future that the Waray region will welcome PNoy’s move of fast-tracking development in Bicol and therefore owe it to PNoy once they will see the link that with Bicol’s emergence as a new development center, Eastern Visayas will very closely benefit therefrom.

Well, according to this QN ideator, the massive boom in Bicol will draw in more than 50 per cent of its manpower requirement, Bicol’s own manpower being prepared for the resultant challenges and responsibilities on that continuum. Not only that, Bicol will absorb most of the agricultural produce in Region VIII – a radical correction strategy that will eventually make Samar (for the most part of the region) and Leyte a development partner of Bicol.

Our proponent here gave the Philippines-United States of America partnership as partly a model for this, except that the Bicol-Waray partnership building will inject insights from China’s successful bid for economic power. Voila!

On the possibility of a no-election scenario, the civil society is believed to reclaim the prestige it once had during the first two years of the presidency of PNoy’s nanay, madam Corazon Cojuangco Aquino. It will succeed in convincing the need for a charter change, via amendments introduced in Congress, that will see the need for the USA to keep Noynoy in power.

The quantum of reasoning offered for this proposition lies on the possibility of North Korea and China teaming up in a well-calculated war against the USA. The charter change will spell that out, while the war threat is effective, or while war will actually occur. Calls for immediate change will most likely be sounded out as early as during the first week of legislative sessions following the May, 2013 elections. By then, more battle ships will ruminate the waters a little off the Philippine north territory, and some beaches north of Luzon will most likely be populated by war-ready American soldiers. God forbid!

The name of Sen. Bong Revilla had been knocked down from their list of possible contenders. Bong will not enjoy PNoy’s support, and so will Jojo, that thus, they may even yield to Chiz, or, to PNoy’s extended presidency, given these scenarios.

Against these nagging backdrops, the common tawo in the Waray Region still plays a deaf ear. They are more excited about how much money will top contenders for local posts will give every voter – not just every family, or home. On a farther end, many farmers cannot spend better time than thinking of how to recoup from losses in harvests that rats, tayangaw and other pests have been stealing ahead. The Department of Agriculture in the region has yet to come up with a credible report on such losses. The National Irrigation Administration also needs to explain why some of the irrigation systems that it had built could not deliver water, accordingly, since the last years of Gloria Arroyo’s presidency, while in a few areas – particularly in Basey, Samar, some parts of its irrigation project has created disaster, in a manner of speaking.

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“We are for peace. But so long as U.S. imperialism refuses to give up its arrogant and unreasonable demands and its scheme to extend aggression, the only course for the Chinese people is to remain determined to go on fighting side by side with the Korean people. Not that we are warlike. We are willing to stop the war at once and leave the remaining questions for later settlement. But U.S. imperialism is not willing to do so. All right then, let the fighting go on. However many years U.S. imperialism wants to fight, we are ready to fight right up to the moment when it is willing to stop, right up to the moment of complete victory for the Chinese and Korean peoples.” – MaoTse Tung.

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