The Liberal Party’s presidential candidate, former Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II, has released a new advertisement portraying himself as bland and unexciting. There are no back stories, no catchy campaign slogans, no compelling human-interest angle behind his presidential run.
Roxas was born into a well-to-do family and was educated in the best schools here and abroad. Nothing heroic, poetic or heart-tugging with that. And now this man with the rather uneventful background is asking us to vote for him so that he could continue the “daang matuwid”—correct it or improve on it, if needed.
Roxas’ argument is compelling in its correctness.
Filipinos have, for numerous times, been fooled by narratives. Perhaps this finds root in our fascination with movies and telenovelas. We believe in archetypes—that certain types of people are bound to behave in a certain way. We ascribe labels, perhaps to facilitate how we receive and store information in our heads and eventually decide if they are worth our support or not.
And always, we fail.
All too soon, we discover that those candidates we have lionized, with stories we have romanticized, are like you and me—fallible and inconsistent, with good traits coexisting with the bad.
It is time to learn from what Roxas is telling us—running a country is not a job for protagonists and superheroes. It is, in fact, a mean challenge to level-headed, intelligent yet humble individuals who can carry a genuine conversation with a head of state as he or she can with the man on the street.
Devoid of drama—indeed. The problems of this nation will ultimately be addressed by a balance of thinking and doing, deliberation and decisiveness.
There is just one thing odd about Roxas’ admonition: its lack of sincerity. He comes up with this message after contriving drama all these months—driving pedicabs, carrying sacks of rice and shedding tears— and finding these have not gotten him anywhere in the polls.
The hypocrisy debunks the credibility that comes from the meat of the message. So let’s heed it and take it further. No drama, sure, but no lies, as well.