Sad State of Philippine Politics

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The bahala na mentality, the single most damaging thing in recent Philippine presidenial elections, might come up from behind and grip us with its scaly claws again. I was scanning Inquirer.net for articles because I have nothing to do, and I want to update myself on the current state of the nation. I almost spewed my drink across my laptop screen when I saw the article "Estrada ’50-50 chance’ of running in 2010" and "Erap trust rating up at 47%".

It seems we haven’t learned anything during the 1998 general elections. With the hype and pomp surrounding this actor, along with the easily impressed mind of the common folk, Joseph "ERAP" Estrada won the whole damn thing from more deserving candidates such as Raul Roco and Alfredo Lim! Well, here we are living out the consequences of his term as president, a country in turmoil and divided, caused by the " irregularities", to put it mildly, of the Arroyo administration.

The easily molded mind of the masses spawned the bandwagon mentality. When Estrada was in power, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was touted as the strength of the people, to oust this president whose bank account under the name Jose Velarde was being tried. The people turned to the then vice-president GMA to free us from a corrupt government.

Now that GMA is leading a government filled with corruption charges and breach of trust (No, we haven’t forgotten the Hello Garci scandal) issues, we looked to impeached President Estrada to lead us against this president with the swine, rice, land development and ZTE corruption charges. We should hang by our thumbs in shame.

Granted, Erap is a great rallying point against this current government, but to go as far as to elect him for another term, we would be commiting a dire bastardization against the Republic of the Philippines. With the more competent candidates for 2010, let us not make the same mistake twice!

To inject twisted humor which I’m known for, our two sins as a country was to pick Estrada over Roco, and Arroyo over Roco, we lost the funky floral shirt forever! Here’s a messed up but logical statement which I had for quite a while: Ever notice that Raul Roco to Estrada/Arroyo equates to Al Gore to George Dubya Bush?