Performance over intelligence

In this day and age, Philippine politics is no longer about a candidate’s brilliant mind being noticed, thereby catapulting him or her to political stardom. What we have now is a free-for-all, and it is not doing the country any good.

If the millennials are among this newspaper’s readers, I would refer them to the era when the intellectual giants like Claro M. Recto, Lorenzo Sumulong, Ambrosio Padilla, Lorenzo Tañada, Emmanuel Pelaez, Arturo Tolentino, Raul Manglapus, Francisco Rodrigo, Gerardo Roxas, Jovito Salonga, Benigno Aquino Jr., among others, and even Ferdinand Marcos, who later became a dictator, graced the august body of the Senate not with their bloated egos, but with their brilliance and gift of gab.

Except for Marcos, whose brutal regime ended disastrously for the country and its people, the other illustrious names mentioned above could have done a better job as president of the country but, alas, it never was their destiny to lead. Or how could they when Marcos stifled their chances of becoming one?

Politics in this country evolved into one that has kept us thinking if we could do any better than electing movie stars, TV personalities, military people and other personalities that have earned notoriety, for one reason or another, to the Senate and catapulting them to the presidency.

But more than the flaw of the candidates in this new era, we can only blame the electorate for accepting and embracing the inadequacies of our present politicians and trusting them to lead us to nirvana.

Thus, in this day and age, performance matters more than the intelligence of any politician.

The issue, therefore, is not whether President Rodrigo Duterte is more intelligent than Sen. Antonio Trillanes, or vice versa. I just find this one childish, if not absurd. Between the two of them, we could only ask whose performance is impacting the nation today.

It should sink in Trillanes’s head that Duterte won the presidency because of his performance as Davao City mayor and his mission and vision to do the same to the country as a whole. His term is not yet over so we will give him the benefit of the doubt.

But it should even sink more in Trillanes’s head by now that his unsuccessful run for the vice presidency in 2016, placing 5th among the 6 candidates, speaks volume of the kind of person he is and his uneventful performance as a politician.--Jesus Sievert

Riding on Didal’s win

With Cebuana Margielyn Didal winning the gold medal in skateboarding in the Asian Games, expect Cebu City Government officials to ride in her new-found popularity. Didal and her family lives in Lahug and we are now hearing Cebu City Councilor Mary Ann de los Santos acting up. Mayor Tomas Osmeña, too, is giving additional incentives.

Yet these officials weren’t to have provided support to skateboarders in the city. Cebu City policemen are also fond of going after skateboarders forced to play in the city’s streets because the city does not have a venue that skateboarders can use unlike in Mandaue City.--Jun Cañaleta