The Philippine Online Chronicles

I’d just completed the opening sentence of my letter to you (“Like some of the Dear Noynoy letter writers, I didn’t vote for you.”) when this friend – an "against the world" guy – came up, sat beside me and asked what’s with the paper and ballpen and the serious mien. Told him I’m writing you a letter, P-noy.

This friend snorted, as he does when disagreeing – which is often – and leaned askance to his right.

“P-noy?” he blurted out with mock incredulity. “Jokey.”

Jokey could be a text junkie word, which a Neanderthal like me can only venture to translate as “sounds like a joke.”

President Benigno Aquino, then?

“The name…" the response was quick and resonant with the resoluteness of this friend’s declaration some years back that he would not vote in an election again, “… belongs to the man and to nobody else.”

So, there. No use pushing my luck.

Anyway, like some of the Dear Noynoy letter writers, I didn’t vote for you. I bear no regret nor rancor, however, as I have made peace with the automated fact that you won and my galing at talino candidate lost despite, oh, never mind. As they say, nandyan na yan.

Sir (I’ll address you this way to stop this friend from snorting), I’ve noticed the spate of Dear Noynoy letters in the papers and the Internet. They must love and care for you.

“Not so,” this friend cut in but did not snort.

They really want you, Sir, to succeed by giving you advices and tips on this and that.

“They are treating him like a walang kamuwang-muwang kid off to his first day in school.”

Sir, I remember that day I went to school for the first time. On top of my school uniform (over a sando and a hand towel spread on my back), my mother swathed me with a raincoat and a rubberized cap. My shoes disappeared inside a pair of galoshes. She could have made me carry one of those black Bumbay umbrellas with the long handle had I an extra third arm.

Like my mother, Sir, I think those Dear Noynoy letter writers are just concerned with the storms that will surely come your way.

“Afraid, more like it,” this friend, ugh, snorted again. “Afraid that he doesn’t have the whatever to weather the tempests, much less shield the country from them. Of course, he can run to the cloistered prayerful for help or turn upwards but we know what the heavens will say. God helps those who help themselves."

Don’t mind this friend, Sir, ‘cause surely those fifteen million plus votes you got are not something to sneeze at.

This friend put a finger across his nostril as if to stop a sneeze. “Election is a numbers game. Not like a talent competition where the winner sang the best, acted the best, gave the best answers.”

This friend can say, Sir, what he wants to say but the fact is you won by the proverbial landslide and…

“And so did that aging James Dean-oypi but what happened? We got buried in an avalanche of Black Label Blue bottles and jueteng betting slips. A whopping eight million plus Filipinos even want him back in the palace by the river. Can you imagine if 'Hey, hey, the gang’s all here' again?

I must admit, Sir, I can’t – I’m afraid to imagine it.

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if one of those so-called think-tanks – ensconced in their high-rise digs like God-anointed world overseers declaring now and then who’s good, who’s bad – would label our country as having the most number of inhabitants with Alzheimer’s disease.”

That may be true, Sir, but we are digressing. Now, Sir, your campaign strategists hit it right on the button with that promise to run after the little lady with hammer and…

“Not surprising…” Sorry, sir, but I can’t stop this friend from cutting in. “… for an election campaign is like, to stay afloat one pushes the other down deep into the cesspool that is politics to drown. It’s nothing but a dung-throwing binge.”

This friend, Sir, for all his cockiness, is naïve, born just hours ago. All is fair in love and war, and very more so, in politics, isn’t that right, Sir?

Now, as I was saying, Sir, I must commend you for promising to eradicate corruption and…

“Alas, it is a promise that will remain a promise as promises come and go every election. Corruption starts as the toddler leaves the crib. The little politician will not take his nap unless he is bribed with a candy. The teener will not run errands or clean his room unless he is bribed with a twenty. The maid will tell the wife unless she is bribed with a raise. The beer-bellied cop will throw everything in the book at you unless you bribe him with a fifty. The grouch behind a desk at City Hall will not sign the papers unless a hundred is plunked down a half-open drawer. And so on, the bribe (there’s no other word for it) getting bigger as the stakes go bigger – a super highway there, a bridge yonder, you name it – and as the bribe-taker graduates from being addressed mere Sir to Honorable, sir, complete with a curtsy from the bribe-giver.”

This is why, Sir, the people jumped with glee when you promised you will smite the corrupt, although they know this has been the battllecry every election and is a gasgas na gasgas na pangako. Still, because you are the progeny of heroic forebears there is this chance that you may mean it and may wash away corruption in this land.

“Impossible.” This friend, Sir, is not impressed; though he did not snort, he smirked.

“Corruption is a way of life and no matter what those ivory tower dwellers say, it is thriving not only in the Philippines but everywhere else in the planet.”

Is this friend saying, Sir, that we should close our eyes and live with corruption?

“What I’m saying is, since corruption is here to stay, we might as well make the most of the situation. As a government official (implicated in an alleged, read that alleged, IT project scandal by a losing bidder with a put-on British twang and a baldie with a garland of onions ‘round his neck) say, even with corruption things could still get ahead if only those bribed deliver on their promises. As in other countries where superstructures are mushrooming despite palms being greased and how thick!”

Unlike in the Philippines, Sir, where…

“To be fair, nothwithstanding allegations of tons of pesos changing hands, there are highways, roads, airports, bridges and other projects that have been built and undertaken. They are there no matter how the other side belies them.”

This friend, Sir, is sounding like a drumbeater of the little lady, but I must admit there are indeed the infrastructures and projects that are helping boost the economy, as the little lady is claiming. But there is this nagging counterclaim that the moolah is not trickling down to the poor.

“The 'not trickling down to the poor’ is a tired refrain that will be chanted over and over unless something is done about the sangkatutak na 'son and daughters factories' located under bridges, along riverbanks and on top dumpsites run by fathers and mothers who can hardly nourish their offsprings or send them to school, as they themselves have not been fed adequately or sent to school by their fathers and mothers, who in their time… and so on down the unending line of fathers and mothers, sons and daughters unable to get into the millions of jobs on the block simply because they lack the education and skill required.”

The men and women of the immaculate cloth do not think a burgeoning population is the problem, Sir, and some of your kumpadres think so, too.

“And so, as the Bible says, the poor will always be with us, waiting idly by for manna that, alas, will never come.”

I’m sure, Sir, that you have plans for the poor like financial assistance, feeding programs, tempo jobs..

“Better still, have the sermoners and promisers share in the burden. Have them adopt half of the dozen or so scrawny kids cramped in each hovel, clothe them, feed them, send them to school. Have the kids feel what it’s like to have real clothes, not rags, on their bodies; eat food they haven’t even seen in their dreams; ride, not walk barefoot, to school in new, not hand-me-down, uniforms; sleep on soft beds, not on hard papag and cold floors, in air-conditioned rooms.”

This friend’s imagination sometimes runs wild, Sir. Who would want a horde of the unwashed running around and dirtying their antiseptic convents and mansions?

“That will be the day I’ll vote again in an election!” With that declaration, this friend left.

You know, Sir, I have this li’l secret. I promised myself I’ll vote for you IF during your campaign you promise to run after those who’d done in your father. I mean the real culprits, not those whom the blindfolded lady have conveniently consigned to waste their lives in prison. I feel strongly about this, Sir, because I see your father as a real hero, not media-propped-up or cinema-made, alongside Rizal. Sons of lesser fathers dastardly backstabbed wouldn’t let the day pass without getting justice. In your case, Sir, you don’t even have to skulk in some dark alley to get yours.

Up to the last minute,Sir, the promise that I – and a lot of others – wanted you to make didn’t come. And so you lost my vote. But what’s one vote to the millions that nurture the hope that you'd make good in your promises, di bale na that they are merely standard promises mouthed during campaign sorties.

Sir, I really do hope you succeed for everybody’s sake. But we are in yet for a very long haul and it will take some real honest-to-goodness doing. Let us see.

Photo: “365::168 - writing” by Sarah, c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved

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Manuel Calleja used to work as a copywriter with advertising agencies.  In his retirement, he does community outreach, including serving as Lupon Tagapamayapa in his barangay in Quezon City. He recently won third place in a national essay writing contest sponsored by National Bookstore and Philippine Star.