“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” — Mike Tyson

As expected, the 10th FVR-RPDEV Lecture Series, entitled “Six-Year Socio-Economic Peace Program” in cooperation with the Roberto F. de Ocampo Center for Public Finance and Regional Economic Cooperation, and Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium of the RCBC Plaza, last Thursday, 16th July, was an outstanding success in enticing six presidential aspirants to the forum.

The assembly itself was skillfully and professionally managed, standing room only (SRO), with a wide spectrum of attendees from foreign diplomats, to members of Congress, Cabinet secretaries, Justices, bankers, businessmen, professionals, teachers, ex-military, and students.

We were informed that at least nine hopefuls were invited to speak and deliver their own presentations, but only six had enough self-confidence to attend. The absentees, we daresay, opted to skip the occasion as being too early to risk and expose their inadequacies.

In our opinion, while, on the one hand, the presentations were well researched, with great clarity, mesmerizing statistics, eloquence, assertiveness, with the exuberance of youth, and superior intellect, the presenters generally had, by coincidence, similar basic thrusts that only differed in emphasis and approach whether it be poverty reduction, education, jobs, justice, taxes, revenue collection, corruption, civil service, or peace efforts – with two conspicuous omissions.

Without reforms and under the same discredited political system, the same skewed governance of today will be repeated from 2010 to 2016, and the President-elect is doomed to fail from day-one by laboring under the same environment of systemic corruption, money politics, political dynasties, Senate intransigence, oligarchic societal structure, mass poverty, insurgencies, and unemployment.

Truth to tell, all politicians, including the presidential hopefuls, will swear on a stack of Bibles that they are sincerely pro-poor, for equal justice, against corruption and poverty, for universal education, democracy, free enterprise, clean elections, green environment, and peace in Mindanao.

That is why since there can be no objections to these motherhood statements, ennui and sense of deja-vu tend to set in towards the end.

On the other hand, the presenters, like most politicians, purposely evaded, for fear of reprisal at the polls, the issue of burgeoning population growth and the Reproductive Health Bill pending passage by Congress, and Cha-cha for fear that the term of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo may be inadvertently get extended.

Last, what kind of democracy shall we have if it takes billions of pesos to get elected President; R200 million to get elected to the Senate; R100 million to get to the House of Representatives; and R50 million for provincial positions – plus or minus a few millions among friends?

When all is said and done, it was former President Fidel V. Ramos who brought the house down, so to speak, when, in an analogy, with the successful and historic climb to Mount Everest by an all-Filipino mountaineers, he quoted them by saying that climbing Mt. Everest was “optional” but climbing down was “mandatory” which was generally interpreted as a fraternal advice to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo not to prolong her stay in office, and gracefully step down after her term in June, 2009.

You be the judge. (For comments and views, please email: chaff_fromthegrain@yahoo.com.ph)