The question is important: Now that Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is not running for President, who will step up and make Senator Alan Peter Cayetano a foundling by adopting him?
But before that, let’s talk about Duterte, the little engine from Davao that couldn’t make it all the way to Malacañang. And yes, I know I predicted that the mayor would run, an idea that appealed to so many people who wanted to see Duterte take his brand of hands-on, no-nonsense governance to the biggest stage of all—the presidential palace.
But as people close to the mayor have repeatedly told me (and the rest of the country, really), no one can force Duterte to do something he doesn’t want to do. And when Duterte declared yesterday that he would run for reelection instead of the presidency, he proved that he was not going to be stampeded into going for the highest office in the land, if he didn’t really want to do that.
I’m sure Duterte truly agonized about running, never mind if he sounded like he never seriously entertained the idea when he filed his certificate for reelection to the mayorship. And I’m convinced that whatever made him finally decide not to run (whether it was his family, his age, his health, his lack of funding or whatever else) is something that only Duterte will really know for certain.
As for me, all I know for sure is that the Davao City mayor could have been a real contender and—if he had won—a true agent of change. Anyone with Duterte’s track record of effective, law-and-order governance and with his promise of refocusing economic growth to the neglected provinces will appeal to people who feel helpless against corruption and crime and left behind by the administrators of Imperial Manila.
I know that some people are still holding out the hope that Duterte will change his mind today, the last day of filing of certificates of candidacy, and declare for the presidency. But at this point, that would probably do him more harm than good, making him appear wishy-washy, something that, I’m told by his closest friends, is farthest from the truth.
In the end, we will never know what the non-candidate Duterte, who stirred up the sort of enthusiasm that I have never seen before (and probably never will again) for someone so reluctant to run, could have accomplished if he had become President. And maybe that’s all for the best.
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But what about Cayetano, the man who would be Duterte’s running mate? What’s the senator to do, now that the star he wanted so desperately to hitch his wagon to didn’t even come close to hitching distance?
Cayetano’s quest for the vice presidency is all but dead in the murky water of the Laguna Bay in his hometown of Taguig. And Cayetano’s naked attempts to convince Duterte to run, so that the mayor may be pressed into service as the senator’s stepping stone to higher office, has exposed him as the worst kind of political opportunist—a class of politician that we certainly don’t need any more representatives of.
If the 2016 elections were a game of musical chairs, Cayetano has been eliminated, since everyone seeking the second-highest office in the land has already found a seat when the music stopped. After all, Senator Bongbong Marcos has found Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago and Senator Antonio Trillanes has latched onto Senator Grace Poe—never mind if Poe already hooked up a long time ago with Senator Chiz Escudero.
(I remain convinced that Trillanes is only running because he needs to be able to attack Vice President Jejomar Binay during the campaign period, and not because he seriously wants to be Vice President. Trillanes’ reason for being in the past year or so has been only to attack Binay, whatever his real motivation is for doing so.)
Cayetano has not filed a certificate seeking to become Vice President, of course. But perhaps Cayetano should, even now that Duterte has withdrawn from the race, just so he doesn’t embarrass himself.
But then, I’ve always believed that Cayetano doesn’t really care if he looks like a turncoat, as long as he is able to pursue his personal political ambitions. This is a man, after all, who demanded that then-candidate Noynoy Aquino present proof that he is not, in fact, mentally incapable of seeking the presidency in 2010; and then, after Aquino won, Cayetano became one of the staunchest allies of the administration.
Early this year, after the Mamasapano massacre happened, Cayetano again became a critic of the government, as if he could find nothing good that Aquino and his people had done to save the SAF 44. And when the administration Liberal Party began looking for a running mate for Secretary Mar Roxas, Cayetano offered his services, eliciting knowing smiles from those involved in the search.
Cayetano, it should be clear by now, is only for Cayetano. And if no one will adopt him, given his record of opportunism, perhaps he should just adopt himself.