There’s someone missing in last Sunday’s second presidential debates in Cebu City. No, I’m not talking about Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago who begged off for being indisposed. At this stage, she should already be stricken off the race. Her consistent single-digit point in the poll surveys has not ticked up, an indication that voters have given up on her. We wish her well and pray for a miracle that she beat the odds against the big C.
The one who’s missing in the Cebu contest is the one person this country direly needs. I thought this candidate might be one of the four appearing in Cebu for the second presidential debates held under the aegis of the Commission on Elections in the run-up to the May 9 national elections. After a lackluster first debate in Davao, the candidates only got feistier. While the Cebu crowd as well as those who watched the live nationwide TV coverage might have relished the heated exchange among the candidates, civility also went missing.
Personal attacks and name-calling flew thick with Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte calling Mar Roxas “ pretentious and a fraud,” in a non-sequitur response to the issue at hand which was Davao’s drug problem. Duterte may be gaining ground in the poll surveys but he’s looking less and less presidential with his demeanor. He insists on his outlandish claim that he can wipe out crime in just three to six months, even adding that he can do the same with endemic corruption in this country. The man is delusional.
While Duterte is burdened with tall claims, Vice President Jejomar Binay came up short in defending himself from corruption charges during his and his family’s 30-year rule in Makati. Binay delayed the debate because he wanted to bring to the podium a sheaf of documents, purportedly to belie all the allegations of corruption against him. Roxas, Duterte and Poe opposed Binay’s insistence to bring his notes. Finally, Comelec chairman Andres Bautista ruled that at the outset, the candidates had not been allowed to bring their notes. That left Binay vulnerable to the corruption issue hounding him since a Senate hearing looked into spurious Makati City contracts exposed by former vice mayor Ernesto Mercado.
Binay should have brought his documents to the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee which was then investigating the allegedly anomalous contracts in the construction of the Makati parking building, the Makati science school, and the overpriced medical equipment and patients beds in the Ospital ng Makati. But he did not. When the issue was raised anew during the debate, Binay again dismissed these allegations as “political demolition” meant to derail his presidential run.
Former Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, on the other hand, continued to mouth President Aquino’s spiel of “tuwid na daan” even if the straight-path mantra had seen too many bumps, twists and turns on the road. Mar wants a continuity of Aquino’s policy, not realizing this is the rear axle dragging him in a slow waltz. Duterte dissed Roxas for his dismal handling of the Zamboanga siege when Moro rebels terrorized the city’s residents for almost a month. Mar defended his action , pointing out he was preventing civilian casualties and the more than 200 hostages held by the rebels.
Grace Poe continued her siren song of meaningful change if elected president even as she was questioned for defending industrialist Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco’s role in the coconut levy funds. Cojuangco’s Nationalist People’s Coalition, the biggest political party after the ruling Liberal Party, is supporting Poe’s bid for the presidency. She blamed the continuing drug problem on the DILG which was then under Roxas, not knowing the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency is under the Office of the President .
Show-of-hands questions on divorce and the death penalty were asked. All four candidates rejected divorce but Duterte and Poe favored the return of capital punishment. Voters and viewers, however, wondered why the biggest and most recent scandal to rock the country—the $81-million money laundering scam—was not brought up during the debate. It would have been interesting to find out how the candidates stand in amending the bank secrecy law that has proven to be a major stumbling block in the prosecution of corrupt government officials. Some senators are opposed to amending the law. Instead, Duterte, in his usual attack mode, chose to impugn the Wharton business school degree of Mar Roxas, a former investment banker.