“We are the losers — ants that get crushed as elephants fight.”
(Part one)
A popular saying goes like this: When elephants fight, the ants get crushed (along with the trampled grass).
That is what is transpiring in our political stage. The elephants are fighting. In one corner, the First Lady and the Speaker of the House. In the other, the Vice President and her father, the former President.
What about the current President? He is just a spectator, or so it seems. In fact, he has just flown the coop (oops!) and is suddenly in the UAE to visit the Emir.
The protagonists are tactical. On one corner, the aim is to demolish a popular political brand so it will be a spent force come 2028, or sooner, as in May 2025.
On the other corner, deprived of presumed entitlements from their contribution to the political effort that brought the current president to where he is, the palace beside the stinking river, they are hurting, and are reacting tactically.
The president is supposed to be strategic in thought and action. Being strategic should be presumed for a supreme leader. But there is no strategy, neither vision nor direction.
Panfilo Lacson said cooler heads must prevail in this war of the elephants. But the gloves are off, and mailed fists are on.
If the president was strategic, he would have chosen men like Lacson and a few others with some competence and good reputation to be in his senatorial slate. Having a multi-party alliance, he should have chosen candidates who represent the better among us, not the least among us.
But no, being tactical, he just relies on the bad old names — the incompetents and the known crooks, because the surveys say — they are winnable.
The other camp is likewise tactical. At the height of their popularity, they should have formed a slate and gotten commitments from names like Lacson who eschewed pork barrel throughout his previous terms, a selfless physician like Doc Willy Ong, or an Imee Marcos who has both brains and savvy.
Now the Davao brand is left with two re-electionists and a gaggle of lesser knowns, because there was no strategy, only a foolish belief as the Diviteam’s term began, that their political partners would treat them well.
If the president were strategic, he would have ordered his close-in family to rein in their horses in the HoR, instead of allowing them to preen like brainless Torquemadas on the stage. But no, he just sits there, and watches, believing perhaps that pro-active demolition jobs and reactionary tactics define strategy.
Mercifully, the amihan is starting to descend upon us. Hopefully, no new natural calamity will spoil the forthcoming season of joy, regardless of the political noise.
But in 1970, when the president’s father had been a year in re-elected office, Typhoon Yoling, packing 200 kph winds, hit the nation’s capital and its environs a week before Pope Paul VI visited in December. End-year typhoons can be calamitous, just like Yolanda which hit the president’s maternal region hardest in November 2013.
Now, it is a political calamity that is upon us. Boiling for several months now, the eruption has occurred, thanks to the obvious persecutory inquisitions of clueless committees of the House of Representatives bent on being the House of HORrors spooking the House of Davao.
Where does this put you and me, us the people?
We are the losers, ants that get crushed as elephants fight, and as the country’s future gets trampled.
What sane foreign investor would yet come to these benighted shores of toxic politics, even with the new CREATE MORE law (we are best at acronyms, that is all our government is good at)? And what about the Maharlika Fund, any progress? Or is Joel Consing feeling like a mahar-loko these days, regretting the day he enlisted for public service?
Our government is in hock for close to 16 trillion pesos. That is expected to grow at 2 trillion per year, compounded, which means my previous prediction in this column of 22 trillion by 2028 when the president ends his term will more likely be 25 to 26 trillion in debt.
The peso is now 59 to the dollar, and watch how insane Trumponomics brings it to beyond 60 by 2025 with our poor country offering little to transact with. Gas and rice will be more expensive as we rely on importing these necessities.
Bad politics is bad for business. And with a GNP fed mostly by consumer spending fueled by OFW’s and BPO’s, with government spending fed by debt addiction, how in heaven’s name are we going to repay those trillions without imploding at some future time?
And all of us, including our saling-lahi, are the losers.
