Happy days are here again?

"Filipinos always keep the faith that things will be better."

Ninety-one percent of Filipinos, according to the latest Pulse Asia Ulat ng Bayan, are hopeful that 2021 will be a better year. Indeed, hope springs eternal, especially among us, considered one of the “happiest” if not happier countries in the world.

Even if there is little reason to be happy, considering the massive poverty that characterizes our boom-and-bust economy, people always keep the faith that things will be better. Likely because of our Christian faith and belief in the potency of prayers, but then again, even if we go back to pre-Spanish colonization, we have been a prayerful and hopeful race, trusting in our gods and deities to bring better fortune.

There is an old American song entitled “Happy days are here again.” It was the campaign ditty of the Democrats’ Franklin Delano Roosevelt who is of course remembered as the man who saved America from the gloom of the Great Depression.

For Filipinos, 2021 is, in the words of our President, “a year of new beginnings,”with prayerful hopes that “the skies above (shall) clear again” and if not happy days, at least redemption from the economic ravage wrought by the pandemic.

We pin our hopes on the vaccine, whatever the brand, whatever the country of provenance, whatever the technology behind its discovery which at best will commence inoculating many of us by the second quarter of 2021.

Many are crying that “some are luckier than others” – the PSG and the other “privileged” men and women who have gone ahead of the rest of the population, virtual guinea pigs to a yet un-certified Sinopharma vaccine from the Middle Kingdom.

Well, those guys took the risk, so thank you for your daring. We hope all is well, and there are no harmful side effects. Legal shortcuts have obviously been done to get the limited number of vaccines here, perhaps even “smuggled” into the country because Xi Jinping wants his friendly head of state protected, given his age and admitted illnesses.

For all we know, other heads of state have been similarly privileged, whether Erdogan of Turkey or Hun Sen of Cambodia. And who knows whether the Brits or the Americans also gave similar first sampling to other leaders and potentates of their liking?

Except in this country, we talk. Nothing is ever a secret, and not always for reasons of transparency.

And if President Duterte knew about it beforehand, as a lawyer who knows the processes of the law, why would he even volunteer the information? So I agree with the Palace call to stop making a mountain out of the issue. The PSG wanted to make sure none of them would be carriers of the virus, as they were always beside the most important man in the country. Let’s put a period to that.

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In the mighty US of A, for four years benighted by an egotistic, hugely transactional and likely unhinged leadership, it looks like someone will never go quietly into the gentle night, and as Bob Dylan says, “will rage, rage against the dying of the light” of his personal fortunes.

Soon to be ex-president Donald Trump inexplicably pressured Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to find enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s slim lead of 12,000 votes in the state last November 3.

Trump even warned Raffensperger about “facing a big risk” if he and his general counsel did not accede to his request. The Georgia official denied Trump’s phoned-in demand, and released the tape of the conversation to the media.

The Washington Post described the bare-faced attempt as “the ultimate smoking gun,” recalling along with other commentators, the Watergate tapes which caused Richard Nixon to resign in disgrace. The desperate Trump has clearly done something very criminal.

But what else is surprising about Mr. Trump’s character?

Meanwhile, some Republican legislators want to make a futile attempt today and in the next few days, to get Congress to question the votes of the electoral college that has certified the Biden victory. Some of them, like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, are merely posturing, pandering to the far right vote that he hopes to use when he next attempts a presidential party nomination for 2026, after losing the Republican Party’s endorsement in two previous attempts. Pathetic.

I said it in an article here last year, that Donald Trump will likely be bodily carried out by the Secret Service out of the White House come January 20. He could wail as much as he wants like a screaming banshee, but a deadline is a deadline. Throwing him out of the Pennsylvania Avenue digs was intended as metaphor, but it just might become reality.

**

Pulse Asia released its Ulat, including indicators of presidential preference, which may have raised some eyebrows. Immediately thereafter, presidential daughter and Davao City Mayor Inday Sara Duterte asked that her name be excluded from future dipsticks, as the nation’s focus should be on the pandemic rather than politics.

Manila City Yorme Isko Moreno echoed the same call, but admitted, or so media reports say, that “lahat naman nangangarap” (maging presidente).

Jaded observers of the country’s political theatre would comment that these are the same templates used by President Duterte himself, when he kept denying, for almost the whole year of 2015, that he was gunning for the presidency.

Vamos a ver. We have started our own series on the so-called “presidentiables” three Mondays ago: Ping Lacson, the outlier; Manny Pacquiao, the pugilist; and Cynthia Villar, the businesswoman. Next Monday it will be “the son.”