“What would a government under the Marcos son look like?”
Last week the country celebrated the 36th Anniversary of EDSA 1. Let’s hope that all those who attended the many celebrations in many parts of the country gave it their best because there is that distinct possibility that this year’s celebrations might be the last if BBM wins.
Why would that be? Because it would be totally incomprehensible and meaningless celebrating the departure of the Marcos family out of the country in 1986 when the people Filipino people of 2022 voted for the late President’s son as the next president of this country.
What might likely happen is that a Congress controlled by the new administration will pass a law abolishing February 25 as a non-working holiday. The other scenario is that a Marcos administration might maintain the holiday but as a working holiday devoid of celebrations.
Perhaps BMM will have a trick up his sleeve and will be able to convince the people that such celebrations will no longer be necessary. There should be very little problem in doing this considering that based on the many polling surveys coming out, BBM will win the May elections. But as we can see how the house is being divided, those who have come out to endorse other candidates belong to the usual crowds. These are the progressives, educated professionals, the religious, some businesses and cause-oriented people. This shows that there will be a sizable segment of the population that we will be seeing on the streets doing their old stuff—protesting.
BMM will therefore have an Everest to climb because we will be seeing three groups of people. Those die-hard followers, those against and those playing it safe. We have seen the last one play out already in what the Batangas governor did. He is endorsing the team of BBM and Sara Duterte Carpio while at the same time sending his solidarity greetings to last week’s EDSA 1 celebrants which as people would say is the classic “balimbing.” No wonder, he was called out on social media and had to delete his tweet.
But maybe the good governor was just showing a glimpse of the way people will behave if we will have BBM as president. After what I have seen of what many people are capable of in my long years in government, nothing really surprises me anymore.
The holiday issue however, is not the only question that people would be asking. There are many others. How would his government look like? Many of those who served under his father are either gone or are probably too old to serve. Will we see the same mold of senior officials that served the late President Marcos in the 1970s and 80s? Since I was able to witness the martial law years from the front row, I could say that many of the cabinet members of the father were highly qualified technocrats. The late president went to great lengths to select qualified people to work for him. That there were also many on the sidelines who committed abusive and atrocious things that eventually caused the downfall is also unfortunately true.
Will BMM pick his senior officials with the same diligence as his father? From there, we can probably extrapolate to figure out what kind of government that we will be having for the next six years. It will also show us whether unity will be achievable or just a meaningless campaign battle cry to hoodwink the voters. I suspect that it will not take long if indeed he will win to know if the people have elected the right leader or experience a buyer’s remorse.
As we have often heard before, six years is too long for a bad president and too short for a good one. Other questions that people may be asking is that will the son be so different from the father? How will he govern a very divided society? And still another question and a very important one is that will there be a revision of history as written over the last 36 years and what will it be? Will people change their view about martial law? How about the media? Will those media outlets that opposed martial law go back to what they used to do and oppose the son’s administration or decide that the best approach is what is known as critical collaboration? One thing for sure, it will be a strange new environment especially in the first year.
Whatever happens, let’s all hope that the country keeps moving forward instead of revisiting events that transpired almost half a century ago and fighting over who was right. If not, we will be wasting six precious years of economic development and see our neighbors continue to pass us by.
