IT’S TIME to move on and move forward, in shared togetherness. Not just you and I, but all the rest of us, marching in unison, no longer in his choiced attire of whatever color has been a favorite, but better in a variety of rainbow colors indicative of oneness, as being all winners of one race: the Filipino race.
Truly, choices have been made. The better choices will be known on next Judgment Day, not so soon as just days after, or weeks after. C’mon guys, it’s not even a full week, yet losers are already hollering at the top of voices, “We’ve been robbed!”
All throughout the campaign period, we’ve gone through a dazzling, dazed time, enduring the clowns and jesters masquerading as saviors of a people made to endure. And survive. And get through it all. In one piece, in all sanity.
For the winners: be humble, demonstrate willingness to be part of the journey much of the voters have partnered with you. Yes, they’re your partners, they who trusted you’d be the better choice, they who prayed hard, worked harder than ever before that you stood head’s up over the rest.
For the losers: accept what happened as par for the course. Stop blaming others, look inwardly instead, and draw lessons learned. Surely there are aplenty of mistakes done along the way, or misgivings regretfully made, or shortcomings not apparent at the time. They’re all par for the course, part of a game you ought to know by now, in full regrets. Next time, you’d be a better candidate, wizened by disappointments thrown your way.
As for the supporters who have given much of their time, talent, and trust, hey, stay focused. A campaign just ended, so be thankful you made it through, surviving the brickbats and the jeers from opposing sides. Hey, they’re friends or relatives, people you’d be with the rest of the way.
Your candidate may have made it, but you’re still out there, striving to look inside. Be patient, he may just notice your peering eyes, your anxious face, the body language of it all. If not, be patient once more, and pray that was promised — favors, concessions, promises — will get to you in time.
If your candidate didn’t, there’s still another chance, 6 or 3 years from now. You got past covid-9, so what’s another time frame of enduring, surviving, getting by. Meantime, it won’t do harm if you try getting the eye of those who won. In a time of economic recovery, surely one added slot for the eminently eligible shouldn’t be too much of a bother.
To reiterate, it all depends on what you expect, moving on, moving forward. Do we wish that Filipinos all over, not just here but elsewhere across the globe, to be merely eking out to survive, to make do with what’s there. Or, should we scale up our yearning and wish much better times should happen?
Do we wish once more that, as in years past, we’d again be made to go through the same debilitating reign, while traditional politicians — now derisively called out as tradpols — give us the usual hogwash of promises worn out for overuse, but seemingly working because we’re simply a people inured to it all? Or have you been minded enough to evict them for a change, a good for something kind of change, convinced that the days of old, as these tradpols have inflicted in their unlamented reign, are finally over and done with, totally rejected, absolutely out for good?
Thankfully, right here in our own neck of the woods — notably dissipating like a passing breeze — we’ve opted to do just that, making the tradpols irrelevant by the collective choice just voiced out by what we oval-shaded in the ballot. Made irrelevant, hopefully with a finality as loud as the voices have resonated throughout the 45-day grind.
Truly, from where we’ve been, we’ve had enough of many, many years of neglect and insensitivity, now denigratingly known as Baguio’s downward descent into depravity and degradation. The comeuppance came thunderously strong for a people who’ve known much better.
For Mayor Benjie and his team, Good Governance Beyond Politics simply rolled through the campaign noise, with blaring trumpets, listened well by those aching for the same change in mindset. Their triumph at the polls didn’t just come handily, tough as it must have been for so tough a mindset to change.
It’s time to move on, move forward, move as if time is running out. Making Baguio better shouldn’t be too much of a clarion call. It’s more of a wake-up call for a citizenry grown numb of the empty promises thrown their way all these years.
No big deal, as we’ve been troubled enough that our beloved city has gone to trash these many times.
No big deal, since we care dearly enough what our city should be in the next 10, 20, 30 years.
No big deal, since we care badly enough for our children and their children, how they’ll made do in a city that has long been driven to waste.
Mayor Benjie’s challenge may well be met by a resolve never to forget those fallen years? An environment on a perilous descent. Trees wantonly felled in the name of more development.
Government services merely drifting along, coasting along — even more so when costing, not coasting, for reasons other than noble.
Roadways irresponsibly encroached upon, the right of way simply dishonored the wrong way.
Infra projects irresponsibly carried out in gay abandon. Riverways gone to worse, polluted day in and day out from deadly waste, human and animal. Government all ears and eyes out for transactions that leave the public good out for good.
This litany of failings and wrongs have been kilometric in length, simply, because elections were more circus-like. More entertaining than ennobling. More promiscuous than promising. Enough of it all, as summed up in four derisive words: puro porma, walang plataporma.
The time to retrieve whatever had been lost — our self-esteem, our sense of pride, our sense of belonging — begins now. Surely, we can recover our sense of what is right, what is urgent, how to do the right thing. But it’s not just Mayor Benjie and his team whose into this task. It’s still you and I and the rest of us doing our shared roles with honor, with responsibility, with self-respect.
Baguio will rise, and proudly be a beacon of hope, not just for us living meaningful, responsible lives here, but even for those communities who may finally see the finality of things if their own constituents realize the folly of tradpols serving themselves first.
AngatTayoBaguio — moving on, moving forward.
