Like many who supported BBM’s candidacy for president, I’m disappointed. My original dream ticket was Inday Sara for president and Imee Marcos as VP. But when Inday decided not to run for the top spot and to support BBM as president, despite my initial hesitation, I went along.
I admired Bongbong’s father, the late president Ferdinand Edralin Marcos whom I considered to be one of our best presidents. I thought Bongbong had changed since his “carefree and lazy” ways, to use the words of his own father who worried about his son, and that Bongbong had now developed “character”, to quote again his father. The former president Rodrigo Duterte thought Bongbong was “weak” to be president and that is why he didn’t support Bongbong from the start. Now I begin to realize how right Digong was in his judgment.
To be fair, Bongbong is an excellent speaker and a good speech writer. He has a pleasant personality. I am told he is a good husband and a good father as well as being an excellent cook. These are all good traits for someone who aspires to be a saint but, unfortunately, not enough to be a leader of a country besieged by so many problems. Weakness leads to cronyism and corruption in government.
What bothers me, in particular, is he appears to talk at two ends of his mouth, his lack of executive abilities, and the poor quality of his advisers.
Allow me to cite three examples which I consider a betrayal of his oath when he assumed office to keep our people safe from harm.
The maternal grandfather of the late president Ferdinand Edralin Marcos – Fructuoso Edralin – was the cousin of Gen. Antonio Luna whom I consider to be a great patriot. Like Luna, Fructuoso fought in the Philippine Revolution to free our county from colonial rule. Bongbong or Ferdinand Jr. carries the illustrious first and last name of his father who was also a nationalist and patriot. I could never have imagined in my wildest dream that Bongbong would return our country to being a protectorate of the United States by granting access to the latter to our military bases in event of war with China over Taiwan, a war where we have nothing to gain and everything to lose in case China strikes our bases that are aimed against her with hypersonic missiles that even the chief of the US Indo-Pacific Command admitted in a US congressional hearing the US is unable to shoot down.
Worse still, Bongbong agreed to give Uncle Sam unfettered access to our bases without adequate compensation for their use, compensation in the form of state-of-the-art weapons like F16 Viper Block 70 fighter aircraft, Himars artillery and Patriot air defense systems, to equip our soldiers and airmen. What happened to Bongbong’s promise to modernize our armed forces? While Uncle Sam provides Taiwan with $12-billion and Israel $3.8- billion annually to defend themselves, we are only given peanuts like $100-million, of which $82-million goes to improving facilities to house US troops and to store US weapons and ammo that could be transshipped by US aircraft even without our knowledge to resupply Taiwan. In other words, our soldiers, sailors and airmen – not to mention civilians living around near those bases – would be placed in harm’s way without means of defending themselves. That is tantamount to them being used as cannon fodder, like the brave Ukrainians who have lost to date 700,000 of their soldiers, killed and wounded, fighting the Russians, not to mention the untold thousands of civilian Ukrainians who have died in that war. What responsible president would risk the devastation of his country and the destruction of his people and soldiers, like what happened to Ukraine, in such a war? What would happen to our 150,000 OFWs in Taiwan? By risking their lives, is that not a betrayal of Bongbong’s duty and responsibility towards them? Would it not have been better to maintain a neutral stance and urge a settlement directly by the conflicting parties?
Last but not least, Bongbong had promised during his presidential campaign that he would pursue the independent foreign policy initiated by his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte by being friends with all nations. An independent foreign policy which by the way is mandatory by use of the word “shall” in the 1987 Constitution, means not favoring a particular nation, especially when nuclear powers are engaged in conflict. Said Constitution also prohibits the carriage on foreign aircraft or vessel and storage of nuclear weapons on our territory and waters. How will Bongbong ensure compliance by the US? When Clark and Subic were in American hands, there was no way our government could ensure the same. What makes Bongbong think he can succeed where his predecessors failed? The US, like the Israelis, have a policy of neither confirming nor denying its warplanes and warships carry such weapons. Wouldn’t Bongbong be guilty of not complying with the Constitution? And is failure not to enforce compliance not a betrayal of his oath of office to defend the Constitution?