Honesty in politics
There is no doubt that Filipinos have unabashedly shown their appreciation and admiration for President Rodrigo Duterte and presidential daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, for their political will, political toughness and their predilection that a politician who runs for public office must truly be a sincere servant leader.
Both exemplified this out-of-the box leadership style in making and sustaining what Davao City is today–a safe, peaceful, stable and highly livable place, which has become the envy of other cities in the country.
The Filipino people, hungry for a change in governance by traditional politicians, opted to throw in their lot with Duterte hoping that what the latter has done in Davao could be duplicated in the whole Philippine archipelago.
On the promise that he will be waging war against illegal drugs, corruption and criminality like it has never been done before, the voters overwhelmingly gave Duterte the mandate to lead the country. Alas, in totality, the complexity and enormity of the drug problem plaguing the whole country has been so overwhelming that three years into his presidency the war is far from over.
It is on this context that presidential daughter, Sara, is spearheading the campaign to have her Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP) senatorial bets elected in the coming May 2019 elections if only to ensure that President Duterte will be able to have control of the Senate to help him implement whatever remaining programs and reforms he has for the country in the last remaining three years of his presidency.
What is perturbing, however, about the coming election is that both the administration and opposition party leaders and their respective candidates are obsessed about honesty more than what they can do to help move the country forward and improve the lives of the Filipinos.
I mean, c’mon, honesty has never been the strongest attribute of any politician and never has it been a requirement to qualify them to run for public office.
Even Socrates, during his time said, “I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.”
It is said that one of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politicians’ objective. Election and power are.
In effect Sara Duterte is right when she said that honesty should not be an election issue. But it does not mean, however, that she has the best senatorial bets. On the contrary she has quite an array of notoriously popular but inept candidates whose only advantage over the opposition bets is their closeness to the powers that be and, who, in reality, does not belong in the Senate.
What is perturbing, however, about the coming election is that both the administration and opposition party leaders and their respective candidates are more obsessed about honesty than what they can do to help move the country forward and improve the lives of the Filipinos.