Noynoy Finally Announces His Bid for the Presidency

As "The Son" rises, is there hope for a sunshiny brand new day for the Philippines?

Eversince Senator Mar Roxas vacated LP's seat for the presidential candidacy I have been in a dilemma, and I think many Filipinos share the same state of indecision with me, of whether or not Senator Noynoy Aquino fits the bill as the President of the Philippines in 2010. Given the choices in the presidential candidates buffet table, I had no appetite to feast on any of them.

But served with a new dish, relatively foreign, since he was out of the limelight prior to his good mother's death, I am considering waiting in the buffet line. But the question that keeps on nagging me is "Can he really do it?" Sans the favorable bias that he benefited from the deaths of his parents and listening to the apprehensions of his critics and other Filipino voters, I was in doubt.

The way I see it, his proven integrity (and that of his family) is what sets him apart from the other presidentiables. Is this integrity more important than the "proven track records" of the other candidates to redeem Juan dela Cruz from his misery? We can answer this by asking another question: What really ails Juan dela Cruz?

Without batting an eyelash my answer would be "moral decay", corruption in particular, gnawing at the moral fiber of the government and our society. You beg to disagree? Think: What really makes Juan dela Cruz poor? Is it really overpopulation? Or overpopulation of crooks and relatives in the government? Why is our educational system so flawed? What cracks our roads? The list continues... But the most interesting question is: Why do a lot of politicians scramble for low-paying positions in government, willingly paying millions, if not billions, of pesos just to become a lowly "public servant"?

Conrado De Quiros' Inquirer.net column today entitled "Yes He Can" seems to answer my quandary of Noynoy's capability to become the next Philippine President. The following paragraphs are snippets of his column that made me think:

What this country needs today is not someone to manage things, it is someone to clean up things. What we need today is not someone to make a business flourish, it is someone to make a dwelling place habitable, one whose previous tenant left it in a condition only cockroaches, rats, and real-estate speculators, in ascending order of predation, can appreciate. Who better to do this than Noynoy?

Or if you persist in using the CEO image, the job at hand is CEO, but only of a company that has been bankrupted by a bunch of crooks. Whom would you hire to revive it? An efficiency freak with a long résumé but who has business interests that compete with the company, who is a known tirador or beholden to people who are, and who therefore can only be trusted to efficiently pillage some more? Or someone you can trust?

...the question “Can Noynoy do it?” is a wrong one. The real question is, “Can we do it?” To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, what we need today is to ask not what the president can do for us but what we can do for the president.

The power of a democracy does not lie in a strong leader—or heaven forbid, strong republic—it lies in a strong people...

You have to read de Quiros' entire column though, and see for yourself if you can be convinced to believe that he can. No, we can! Here is the link to Yes, He Can.