Had Sen. Ferdinand \u201cBongbong\u201d Marcos Jr. won the vice presidential contest, it could have been one of the greatest \u2014 if not the greatest \u2014 political comebacks in the annals of politics.\u00a0And the 30 years that passed since his father, the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, was ousted and the entire Marcos family booted out of the country, it would have been a saga that historians would consider as the pinnacle of political achievement.\u00a0No political dynasty in modern times had done such a spectacular comeback.\u00a0If history had to be repeated, the Marcoses would have been consigned to the dustbin of history, maligned and laughed at.<\/p>\n
But like a snail that inched its way \u2014slowly but surely \u2014 to the top, the Marcoses cunningly calculated each movement to achieve the desired result without alarming those who have vowed \u201cNever again!\u201d to their comeback.\u00a0Had Bongbong run for president instead of vice president, the pushback would have been so great that it would have buried his presidential ambitions for good, never to resurface again.\u00a0But he must have known that and instead took a path that was safer, a run for the vice presidency.<\/p>\n
In my article, \u201cWho doesn\u2019t want to be vice president?\u201d (August 28, 2015)<\/em>, I wrote: \u201cWhoever wins the vice presidency would be in a good position to run for president in 2022. Statistics show that out of the 10 presidential elections since 1946,\u00a0 five incumbent vice presidents ran for president in the next presidential election and won.\u00a0They were: Elpidio Quirino in 1948, Carlos P. Garcia in 1953, Diosdado Macapagal in 1961, Joseph Estrada in 1998, and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2004.\u00a0But three other incumbent vice presidents had opted not to run for president, to wit: Emmanuel Pelaez in 1965, Salvador Laurel in 1992, and Noli de Castro in 2010. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBased on these historical data, whoever is elected vice president in 2016 would most likely win the presidency in 2022, which begs the question: Does that mean that Poe, Roxas, and Duterte don\u2019t have a ghost of a chance of beating Binay?\u00a0Not necessarily.\u00a0A case in point was Aquino who \u2014 like Poe \u2014 was an incumbent senator when he ran for president in 2010.\u00a0Out of a field of nine presidential candidates, which included heavyweights former Senator Manny Villar, former President Joseph Estrada, and former Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, Aquino beat them all with 42.08% of the vote!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The fall of Binay<\/strong><\/p>\n There were rare exceptions as in the case of Vice President Jejomar Binay, who ran and lost in the recently concluded 2016 presidential elections.\u00a0 However, his loss may be attributed to a slew of corruption and plunder charges that eroded his popularity ratings during the campaign period. Within a few months, his ratings plummeted from number one position to the bottom among the five major presidential candidates.<\/p>\n Binay would have been unbeatable had he kept his nose clean. But the corruption activities that he was allegedly involved with when he was mayor of Makati City were hammered in by his rivals during the campaign.<\/p>\n The rise of Leni<\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n On the vice presidential derby, Bongbong and Congresswoman Leni Robredo fought the battle neck and neck.\u00a0In the end, Leni outvoted Bongbong by a razor-thin margin of a little over 260,000 votes.\u00a0Although Leni was relatively unknown, she had no prior national election experience. Her late husband, Secretary of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Jesse Robredo, was very popular with the ordinary people.\u00a0His habit of wearing rubber flip-flop slippers \u2014 or \u201ctsinelas\u201d<\/em> \u2014 in public had earned him their respect and admiration.<\/p>\n While her husband\u2019s legacy helped her win the support of the common people, Leni got a big boost from the \u201cKaya Natin!\u201d<\/em> \u2014 a good governance grassroots movement \u2014 that Jesse founded together with Pampanga Governor Fr. Ed Panlilio and Isabela Governor Grace Padaca. However, with the defeat of Panlilio by the powerful Arroyo-Pineda political alliance and the loss of Padaca in a recount engineered by the powerful Dy family dynasty, Kaya Natin!<\/em> was decimated of its leadership. Naga City Mayor Jesse Robredo survived the political assault. In 2010, President Benigno Aquino III appointed him DILG Secretary. He served in that capacity until his untimely death in 2012.<\/p>\n Solid North<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n On the other hand, there was Bongbong who is identified with his late father, whose dictatorial regime had rubbed millions of people the wrong way, causing deep wounds in their psyche.<\/p>\n But since the three decades that had passed since the EDSA revolution, a new breed of Filipinos \u2014 the post-martial law babies and the millennial generation<\/em> \u2014 has come of voting age.\u00a0And they were the sources of Bongbong\u2019s strengths, not to mention the vaunted \u201cSolid North\u201d that had brought sons of Ilocandia\u00a0\u2014 Elpidio Quirino, Ramon Magsaysay, Carlos P. Garcia, Ferdinand E. Marcos, and Fidel V. Ramos \u2014 to the presidency in the past.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n With the clannishness of Ilocanos, it is not unusual to hear them proclaim their loyalty to Bongbong Marcos, the heir to the Marcos dynasty.\u00a0\u201cMarcos pa rin kami\u201d<\/em> (We\u2019re always be for Marcos) became their rallying cry during the campaign.<\/p>\n A waiting game<\/strong><\/p>\n With Bongbong\u2019s Senate term coming to an end on June 30, 2016, what\u2019s in store for him?\u00a0Is he going to retire from public service or is he going to seek an appointment from his good friend, president-elect Rodrigo Duterte, so he could remain in the political limelight while he mulls over his future?\u00a0 At 58 years of age, he could still run a great deal of political mileage including another run for a Senate seat in 2019 and the presidency in 2022.\u00a0By that time, he\u2019d be 64 years old, which would be his last chance to reclaim the glory and power his family had enjoyed for so long.<\/p>\n But Bongbong going for the presidency in 2022 would be a lot more complicated and challenging than it was when he ran for vice president.\u00a0 Needless to say, Leni Robredo would most likely run for president too; thus, making their face-off a rematch but at the higher heavyweight division.\u00a0As vice president for the next six years, Leni would be \u201cpresident-in-waiting\u201d and just a heartbeat away from the presidency.\u00a0 Indeed, the vice presidency is the best \u201con-the-job training\u201d without doing much\u2026 just waiting.<\/p>\n The clash between Bongbong and Leni in 2022 would set the direction of where the country is going to be in the next quarter century.\u00a0Surmise it to say, Bongbong represents the country\u2019s elite while Leni identifies with the common tao<\/em> \u2014 the \u201ctsinelas\u201d<\/em> followers of her late husband. But while Leni\u2019s pursuit of the presidency is a given, Bongbong\u2019s mission in life appears to be to vindicate his father.\u00a0If he loses, then it will give the people a glimpse of how history will treat Ferdinand E. Marcos.\u00a0It has been said, \u201cTime heals all wounds.\u201d But the wounds are deep and it might be too soon for healing\u2026 if it ever will. Quo vadis, Bongbong? (PerryDiaz@gmail.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Had Sen. Ferdinand \u201cBongbong\u201d Marcos Jr. won the vice presidential contest, it could have been one of the greatest \u2014 if not the greatest \u2014 political comebacks in the annals of politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}