"YES, NAG-UPO kami — kasama ko rin si Senate President — with Vice President Leni. At the time, kasama niya si [former] Sen. Bam Aquino.”
So, 2022 presidential pretender Sen.
Ping Lacson confirmed a meeting with Vice President Leni Robredo, herself a
presumed presidential timber.
“Di
ko lang ma-divulge yung pinag-usapan dahil wala naman akong authority sa kanya
para i-share yung aming pinagusapan. Pero nag-usap na kami,” Lacson added.
Similarly, another president-wannabe
Sen. Dick Gordon: “I don’t know if I’m allowed by the Vice President, we had a
chat last week. But I don’t want to say anything about what we talked about.”
Asked if they spoke about a possible
“partnership” in the 2022 elections, Gordon said: “Yes, for transparency’s sake
because lalabas at lalabas ‘yan. Pero hindi namin pinag-usapan kung sino ang
kandidato.”
Another presidentiable, Manila Mayor
Isko Moreno, is reported to have met also with Robredo. This, on top of their
various “meet-ups” in their joint vaccination programs for the marginalized
sectors in Manila.
Lacson. Gordon. Moreno. All have had
their date with Robredo. Come now the lamentations from a spurned suitor –
“Simula January, ako/Magdalo, and
later on through Tindig Pilipinas, ay nagre-request ng meeting kay VP Leni para
masimulan na ang preparation. Subali’t
ayaw niya kaming i-meet dahil kasalanan daw sa Diyos nap ag-usapan ang
2022 elections habang may pandemya,” former Sen. Sonny Trillanes rued on
Facebook.
The Veep’s spox, Barry Rodriguez
riposted: “I’d imagine there should be an easier way to ask for a conversation
than throwing a tantrum on social media, right?”
Trillanes, reports said,
has not been kept out of the loop of the VP’s intent to build the “broadest
unity” possible in 2022.
“Discerning” is how
Robredo’s approach to her presidential bid is described.
“The more
pragmatic Vice President argues that she needs a fighting chance to push through
with her presidential bid – otherwise, someone else might be a better option
than her in 2022,” so it was reported. Hence, the imperative to touch base with
others who are not necessarily
allied with the opposition. Horse trading, it’s called, as old as, if not
even older than electoral politics itself.
What is generally
accepted as “par for the course” in the run-up to the elections, Trillanes
considered “crossing the red line.” Convinced as he is that only Robredo has
the right to the banner of the opposition.
Thus,
Trillanes: “We don’t buy this pretext that she can’t win therefore we need to
compromise our principles by aligning with these Duterte enablers. I don’t buy
that crap.”
Principles. The senator there
instantly dredging memories of columns past, this one from the long defunct Pampanga
News (Jan. 19-25, 2006), excerpted:
Politics and the rule of law
PRINCIPLED politics is a
contradiction in terms: mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed, for in
politics “no one acts on principles or reasons from them.”
There is that generalization arising from the fixity of our intellectual habits
that deems the recurring characteristic trait of a segment of one species as
representative of that species, if not of the whole genus. Thus, taken on the
whole, politicians are “…the vilest and the narrowest of sycophants and
courtiers that humanity has ever known; their sole end basely to flatter and
develop all popular prejudices, which, for the rest, they but vaguely share,
never having consecrated one minute of their lives to reflection and
observation.”
And, Monsieur Leroy Beaullieu did not even live long enough to read of the
Filipino politician, writing as he was of the French kind in the 1890s. So
what’s the difference between a Filipino politician and dalag? One is a
voracious filth-feeding bottom dweller. The other is a fish.
Expediency and convention, utility and interests – self-serving, vested
interests, are the fundamental matters – I could not dare write principles here
and desecrate the word – whence politics breeds…
Aye, where principles end, politics begins. And thrives.
I can only weep with Trillanes.
