“One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are.” –Cal Thomas
There are some (primarily municipal mayors and some barangay officials) reportedly predicting former Senator Lito Lapid, Senator Manny Pacquiao, or Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio will be president in the future. There is no solid basis for the speculation other than their being “low key” public figures. Of the three, Duterte-Carpio, being the president’s daughter, is the most likely to run as her name has come up in several surveys. By carrying the president’s last name, she already has an edge with name recall and nationwide machinery to back her fast-growing political party.
These same people believe Lapid has the “charisma with the masa.”
“People don’t care if he did not even finish high school,” said a former mayor from northern Iloilo who refused to be identified. “What matters most is [the] he connects and this is something that other politicians with doctorate degrees and multiple titles don’t possess.”
They added, Lapid still calls himself a “a loyalist of Pareng Erap (Manila Mayor Joseph Ejercito Estrada).”
With regard to Pacquiao, the former town official called him “a media creation like other celebrities and showbiz misfits who trespassed [into] politics.”
They believe senator will be the highest office he could achieve – “Never as president of the republic,” they affirmed.
I will never endorse “big names” just because they are popular. I am looking for substance.
‘Leon Guerrero’
Lapid’s description on the Senate website likens him to “Leon Guerrero,” one of his action films, where “the lowly person of a silver screen hero” began his political career as Pampanga vice governor in 1992.
“Never did it occur to the ‘lowly person of a silver screen hero’ that a man of his mettle would make a mark in the annals of this chamber, a place then forbidding of the not so lettered,” his biography reads. “Indeed, as a testament to a working democracy, a person with little formal education can be presented the opportunity of belonging to the group of select individuals mandated by the people to craft policies that would later on become laws and rules of conduct.”
“For this reason, Senator Manuel ‘Lito’ M. Lapid never passed off the chance to deliver well in this world of the erudite,” it noted.
The biography went on to read: “The six years of his first term as a senator were marked with achievements which left the cynics perplexed and his critics baffled, but nevertheless proved his worth as a working legislator. He was one of the top performing senators having placed fourth among his peers in the number of bills and resolutions filed in the 14th Congress alone. He fathered one of the meaningful social legislations of the 14th Congress, the Free Legal Assistance Act of 2010, which seeks to ensure that the poor may be afforded free quality legal service. This measure heralded other policy initiatives that look to bridge the great divide between the rich and the poor. Since then, he never wavered on making proposals that would uplift the living standards of the little people of the society whose caused he has been championing, being the ‘Bida ng Masa’… Consistent with his excellent showing, when he was then a neophyte Senator, he did what he could, not to disappoint the more than eleven million Filipino voters who granted him a fresh mandate in the 2010 national elections. At the close of the 15th Congress, Senator Lapid filed 239 measures earning him the distinction as the fifth-most prolific members of the upper chamber. He authored the Meat Labeling Act of 2011, Comprehensive Unilateral Hearing Loss Research and Development and Rehabilitation Act, Urban Agriculture and Vertical Farming Act, Corporate Social Responsibility Act, Kindergarten Education Act, the Adopt-A-Wildlife Species Act, among others. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Games, Amusement, and Sports, he saw to it that measures are in motion to sufficiently ensure the development of sports in the grassroots, seeing to it that the youth develop a keen interest on participation to sports competition… He looks forward to further coordination between concerned government agencies so that appropriate support is afforded to the national sports development program. In his first year at the helm of the Senate Committee on Tourism, he has initiated initiatives to oversee the development of the tourism potential of the country and gather the tools to ensure the country’s success as it joins the tourism race with our Asian neighbors… With the aid of the people who believe in him and share the causes he seeks to uphold, Senator Lapid has proved that he is one who cannot easily be dismissed. Despite the unfair imputations against his competence, he has successfully struggled towards becoming one of the more productive legislators, slowly dispelling one criticism after another to distinguish himself as a dependable leader, a scholar of worthwhile ideals, a gentleman for the masses and a warrior for social responsibility.”
***
Alex P. Vidal, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo./WDJ