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Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Who is better, Rody Duterte or Mar Roxas?

December 14, 2015
by Kate Natividad
When will we find out nga ba? All I see are the rabid supporters of one camp trolling the other. The only ammo I see flying are lame globs of mud being flung from one side of the fence to the other?
Nakaka-bobo!
But then, hey, this is the Philippine electorate we are talking about, I might remind myself. The ‘debate’ we see playing out over social media is nothing more than a meeting of the bobo-minds. Battle of the Brainless on a national scale! An affront to every bit of intellectual achievement claimed by humankind. Every Pinoy political ululation is a substraction from the sum total of global human intelligence.
rody_duterte_mar_roxas
I must be a glutton for punishment expecting more intellectually-stimulating discourse in the lead-up to yet another Philippine election. I noticed that there are no more of these Platform Plez types of “voter education” initiatives. Or at least I no longer see them being retweeted or being shared on my timeline. I no longer see any witty memes extolling the virtues of voting ‘wisely’ — because there never was a candidate named Wisely ha ha! I know, I know. Lame attempt at humor there.
The point is, nag-sawa na rin ang mga ‘voter education’ ka-ekekan. No amount of education will ever cure the acute bobotanteism that afflicts the Philippine electorate. You know why I am so sure of this? Because you can see the evidence right now. It’s down to just the Talented Mister Mar Roxas and the Homicidally Misogynist Rody Duterte to choose from in these elections today. And the funny thing about the situation today is that at no time in electoral history has the rabidness of the supporters of both bobo-candidates been so, well, so rabid.
Why has the future of the country’s top executive office come down to a choice between these two idiots? How did the Philippines come to plumb such a low in the annals of non-excellence? Why does the Philippines continue to excel in efforts to become the world’s premier anti-thesis to the age of enlightenment?
Well, I’m not going to go into that because much has already been written about the fact of the idiocracy that the Philippines is.
Since Filipinos have, by their own doing, pretty much imprisoned themselves into this lose-lose choice of who their next president will be, I think the task at hand is to once and for all find out which is the better candidate. I do understand, of course, the futility in this exercise, as it is like one of those trick questions we used to ask one another as kids. Like: What sort of guy do you prefer to marry, a man who is rich but physically repulsive or a man who looks like Oscar Isaac but possesses the wit of a doorknob?
Fortunately, comparing Mar and Rody need not be such a paradoxical joke. Both options actually have a common denominator on which to match wits. I think most Pinoys have forgotten what that is but here is a quick brain jogger: the national interests. Let’s remind ourselves that the next president of the Philippines should have the interests of the nation as his or her foremost mission to uphold.
In that light, the discussion of who the better candidate is — Mad Max Duterte or Hollow Head Roxas — actually does have an important context. The Philippines’ future is at stake. Perhaps, seen in this light, we could actually start taking the real debate at hand a bit more seriously. Rather than ponder the question of who the “better candidate” is, the question should be more about who will serve the Philippines better.

Kate Natividad

Frustrated artist doing geek for a living.

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