True colors

LIKE cornered rats, the most rabid supporters of President BS Aquino and Mar Roxas show yet again their true colors when Grace Poe finally declared her presidential candidacy.

From courting her to accept the invitation to be Roxas’ runningmate, they sharply switched to demonizing and maligning her. Before, she was the perfect partner. Today, she has become ill-prepared, ineligible, and a puppet.

If Poe was supposed to be their most preferred vice presidential candidate, the Liberal Party and the Yellow Camp surely made due diligence checks on her fitness – politically, constitutionally, and mentally. That Aquino and Roxas themselves directly spoke with her, courted her, and pleaded to her is proof-positive of her fitness for the role of either president or vice president – the basic constitutional requirements are the same for both posts.

If Poe was not Filipino or the LP had doubts about her citizenship, both presidential and LP lawyers would have advised Aquino and Roxas against considering and courting her.

If Poe was not experienced enough or did not have what it takes to be president, then Aquino and Roxas would not have bothered. But they courted her – incessantly and persistently.

But since Poe rejected the offers of Aquino and Roxas, and instead chose to run as an independent, the LP and the Yellow Camp immediately changed gears to viciously and maliciously attack Poe. The people are not that stupid that they won’t notice how crass, selfrighteous, opportunist, arrogant, and sexist they really are.

We cannot blame the LP and the yellow camp for being desperate. Poe launched her presidential candidacy with a powerful critique of the current dispensation. Poe’s battlecry “Walang Maiiwan” (No one left behind), however politely it was said, is a ringing indictment of the sham that is “Daang Matuwid.”

Poe invoked her past as a foundling, her present as a mother, and her potential future as president in a speech that reached out to Filipinos who have been neglected, abused, and shamed by and under Aquino-Roxas. They are many. In fact, they are the majority.

Channeling their issues, Poe called on youth and seniors, LGBTs and Lumads, workers and farmers, commuters and employees, and especially OFWs, to join her. Fresh from a battle over balikbayan boxes, OFWs surely appreciated that Poe prominently mentioned them – in stark contrast to Aquino’s silence about OFWs in all his SONAs. Overall, the speech was nothing less than an open invitation to form a broad coalition of citizens and sectors – surpassing the swindling and dwindling yellow camp.

Indeed, compared to rejecting the invitations from Aquino and Roxas, perhaps Poe’s worst sin to the Yellow Camp is this: How dare Poe “steal” the mantle of change from them? How dare this foundling? How dare this woman?

But that’s not Poe’s fault. Neither is it the people’s fault. Aquino and Roxas had many chances to lead towards positive, progressive, and pro-people change but they didn’t.

Instead, Aquino and Roxas prosecuted the corrupt in a blatantly selective manner, denied tax cuts to the majority, gave tax refunds and sovereign guarantees to Big Business, coddled landlords and kept farmers landless, ruined the MRT through incompetence, turned over the LRT to private business under onerous terms, allowed the carnage of police commandos, gave special treatment to Jovito Palparan, tried to interfere in the Iglesia Ni Cristo, killed the Freedom of Information bill, transformed chunks of the budget into presidential pork barrel, passed a cybercrime law, and turned natural disasters into man-made calamities. The list is long, fresh, and live.

Poe did not invent or manufacture these issues. Neither did the people. Aquino presides over a reign of error, and Roxas vows to continue it. That Poe saw this rather clearly and chose to position herself as the Change Candidate are marks of intelligent and empathetic leadership.

And then, there’s Poe’s proclamation of Chiz Escudero as her runningmate. There’s no better proof of Poe’s readiness to lead than to be able to immediately present her vice presidential candidate. Roxas and Jejomar Binay now look like pariahs compared to Poe. It seems no one wants to run as their runningmate.

The LP and the Yellow Camp also have yet to forgive Escudero for sinking Roxas’ vice presidential dreams in 2010 by supporting Aquino and Binay. Now, he wants to run for the same position and sink Roxas’ dreams of getting Poe as runningmate? How dare him? And how dare voters choose Binay over Roxas in 2010?

Launching his vice presidential candidacy, Escudero proclaimed that Poe would form a “Gobyernong may puso”. If it strikes a chord among voters left out for the past five years and thus are pining for change in the next six years, that’s not his fault.

The slick and emotional rollout of the Poe-Escudero tandem summoned the worst in the LP and the Yellow Camp. The back-to-back events at UP Diliman and Club Filipino were like a double-dose of exorcism. And the LP and the Yellow Camp acted like monsters undergoing exorcism: They were hysterical, terrorized, panicking.

The speeches of Poe and Escudero made them recoil in horror, terrified at the prospect of a near-certain defeat and made them unleash vitriol that has been the hallmark of the LP and the Yellow Camp. They can’t handle the truth that their happy days could really be numbered and that their lies are unraveling.

The LP and Yellow Camp should be terrified by now. After the unveiling of the Poe-Escudero tandem, the people now turn their eyes towards Miriam Defensor Santiago and Rodrigo Duterte. Mavericks that they are, the possible entry of Santiago and Duterte either separately or as a tandem would spell doom to Binay and especially to the perennial kulelat Roxas.

Roxas, however, is not yet politically dead. Aquino’s 3-trillion budget for 2016, with its pork barrel and lumpsums, and the entire machinery of government could still be misused by the LP and the Yellow Camp to bribe their way and to steal the elections.

Remember: Rats get to be most vicious when cornered.

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