A legacy of rewards and patronage

At this stage in the presidency of Barack Obama, a legacy is being established that shows not just the importance of security for the American people, but also the security of the global universe, of which we all belong. We see in Obama’s penultimate acts to secure global peace hope for a future characterized by cooperation even among adversaries. Of the legacies he leaves, one of the most important is the recently inked Iran nuclear deal. 

Lowering global tensions, no matter how distant, is important. Truth to tell, swallowing our pride and facing up to reality, the Philippines remains, perhaps, the United States’s staunchest, albeit weakest, ally in the Pacific.

By all intents, we are effectively a protectorate, as we confront challenges from bullies who laugh at our weaknesses and ridicule our strengths. It does not help that China now has one of its strongest, most driven and forward-looking leaders, while we have the diametric opposite.

Obama is far from the kind of lazy, do-little and do-nothing politician, especially where a president might fall into that pathetic lame-duck phase in his final months in office.

Obama has been busy with things we all need to be busy with. It is not politics and it is not his political successor who might guarantee against future prosecution. Only the myopic would busy himself with such.

The deal with Iran is the stuff of presidential legacies. Unlike local cop-outs, the Iranian deal is far from the unconstitutional Bangsamoro Basic Law that President Aquino railroads as his legacy for the South. The historic agreement with Iran does not seek miracles, but it is finely measured and it stops a rogue state from procuring deadly nuclear weapons.

It surrenders to reality, but does not compromise. And it is not political posturing for posterior protection.

For any leader primarily vested with vicarious credibility, thus, enjoying a mandate largely undeserved, save for an accident of history, the end of a presidency might be time to assess what legacies might be left behind.

Such legacy is important because it will overwrite a presidency inherited quite undeservedly. Unfortunately, on the eve of 2016, we continue to sink deeper into personality politics. It is unfortunate that President Aquino’s presumptive anointed is a master practitioner of such, cognizant as he is of political surnames and partisanships.

For as long as contrived persona heads our electoral criteria, relegating all other issues, then personalities will, indeed, found Philippine politics and we will forever suffer the same curses we do now.

Most alarming is the imperative imposed on legacy building, given the brevity of a six-year term where legacies might take longer to establish, and the likelihood of drastic political change when a new administration is swept in on the pleas of a victimized constituency for better governance and better leaders.

Because we are hurting as a collective constituency, our demands are more critically personal, not by accident, but by our deliberate folly when we voted blindly and parlayed dead icons and an unknown variable into the presidency, thus, stupidly misconstruing Benigno Aquino III an ideological heir and constructed from similar heroic clay.

Mea culpa. He isn’t. Far from it. Simply analyze the myopic security issues Aquino busies himself with.

First, he pulled out all stops to ram through a treasonous and unconstitutional betrayal that will truncate a good third of the country and effectively reward secessionists and terrorists who’ve taken up arms against the Filipino people.

Next, he rewarded loyal lieutenants with either the choicest positions or higher pay-grade ranks, regardless of merit, the remaining term prior to their retirement, and most important, their complicity in fatal human-rights controversies.

Finally, he may soon anoint a certified loser with a rap sheet of ineptitude and temper tantrums if only to reward the latter and ensure that the presidential KKK coterie remains scotfree and continues malversing pork-barrel billions well into 2021.