IT WOULD SEEM that rather than moving on and further forward, we’re more stuck in being where we are. It’s been over two weeks since E-day, but here we are still engrossed on what was, what has been, and what could have been. Nyet, the old saying that there are no losers in Philippine elections seem to be holding on — the winners get proclaimed and the losers (or their supporters and whoever couldn’t get the comeuppance over) yell out the loudest of having been robbed blind and clean.
Couldn’t we just move on? Are we waiting to be told to our face “It’s time to move out — out of your deepening rage, out of your comfort zone of anonymity, hidden behind identities cloaked in darkness — and get it over from the outside.
Indeed, choices have been made, despite the rumblings of over the fence standards. Surely, there’s a good time for retribution. But being so tenaciously holding on to straws, shouldn’t we just accept what has been decided in so conclusive a manner, without to pontificate to the outside world how lousy a loser we can be or how bad a winner we must be. Either way, we’re just being laughed out, belly up, for the kind of elections we do.
Even now, the national polls would seem to be hanging by the thread of whoever is holding the string. There’s raging talk that someone’s disqualification is looming large, and someone’s bound to succeed in so phenomenal method. So polarized are we that wherever the principal actors are, the loudmouths persist, burning with rage, oozing with vitriol.
To reiterate: let’s get this enduring drama out of the way. For the winners: be humble, demonstrate willingness to be part of the journey that 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. Exercise magnanimity in triumph.
As for the losers: accept what happened as par for the course. No need to blame others, and at day’s end, have the courage to 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 part of a game you ought to know by now, even regretfully. Next time, you’d be a better candidate, wizened by disappointments thrown your way, drawing from the experience of heartaches that could have been averted.
A campaign has had its curtains drawn down. The theatre has ended, has come to a dramatic close. 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, all your life and theirs. Why not make things up, the way they should. Relationships and friendships are not worth losing over choices made due to politics. Sneeze it over. Get it over and done with.
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?
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?
Good thing that over 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 kind of finality as loud as the voices that have resonated throughout the 45-day grind.
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. Again, the choice has been made, duly cast when we shaded someone’s oval opposite his/her name.
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 — either we move on and move forward, or we move out, waiting for more sunshiny days. If we care for our city, our nation well enough, there’s no choice really. No patriotic choice!