P-Noy: The accidental president

The political dynasty is alive and thriving in the Philippines. The country just inaugurated its 15th president, the fourth after Marcos was deposed in the people power revolution of 1986. Since Marcos, the people of the Philippines have elected a housewife in Corazon Aquino, a General (Fidel Ramos), a movie star (Joseph Estrada) and by default (or by political shenanigans), an economist in Gloria Arroyo. Now the Philippines has chosen another Aquino in Noy-noy, the son of the late president and martyr Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino. Noy noy had toiled almost in obscurity as a senator, not having written much in terms of legislation, and seemed destined to lead out a fairly non-plussed life in the senate when his mother Cory Aquino died. It was then that somebody made the decision that Noy should run for president, regardless if he had the experience to run what has become yet again, a broken country. I say broken, because in the 25 years since Marcos was deposed, not a whole lot has transpired in the country to lift itself up off the floor of Southeast Asia and into the modern world, or at least along the same standards of Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, and dare I say it, Vietnam, a communist country.

The Philippines continues to wallow in its own corrupt misery, when history tells us that just a generation ago, in the 1960s, the Philippines was second, only to Japan in terms of economic output. It could have been, scratch that, it should already be an industrialized nation, or at least a nation that doesn't depend on its overseas foreign workers to keep the economy humming. It is ironic that all those Filipinos leave the country to build other nations while their own country lay in shambles, more than 25 years after Marcos fled to Hawaii. But back to the topic of this accidental president. P-Noy as he has already been labeled, has a huge task at hand in making the Philippines a first world country, a proud country that its people can be proud of. P-noy's sister Kris, the primadonna of all primadonnas in the Philippines, an irritant at most who spend a lot of her time trying to sell whitening cream to a nation of brown skinned people, had better not meddle in P-noy's decision making. I am hoping that the man doesn't kow tow to his sister's wishes, and knows how to run, or at least pick the right people to help him run, the country. What is truly scary is that eventhough P-noy won this election, the second placer was none other that Joseph Estrada, a disaster of a president who only gets votes because he is a movie star who plays downtrodden and average Filipinos in his movies. This goes to show you the intellect of the majority of those who vote in the Philippines. Before his inauguration, there was a lot of whining from P-noy regarding Arroyo doing this and that prior to her leaving office. There was also a lot of buzz during the campaign about going after corrupt officials and rooting out corruption. We shall see if this comes to pass or was just a passing fancy during the election cycle. The man has a heck of a lot on his plate to fix, and I am hoping that the congress and the senate can WORK WITH HIM on the right issues to move the country forward. As it has been though the congress and especially the Senate have taken a lot of heat for lacking in cranial capacity as well as intellectual fortitude. There are a lot of people in both the Congress and the Senate who are out to enrich themselves and their families, and I am hoping that P-noy can put a stop to this corruption. Because if the corruption doesn't stop, the Philippines will forever remain the sick man of Asia.