WE simply cannot understand how amidst a continuing health crisis of global proportions someone has the callousness to announce his intention to run for president of the country, albeit one with a condition that it will be withdrawn when someone else within his party will gun for the presidency.
Antonio Trillanes IV, former senator, should not have made a public statement of his intentions considering the present state of affairs of the nation. It is the height of insensitivity to openly declare one’s political ambition even while the country is still trying to manage and mitigate the dire effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The supporters of Davao Mayor Sarah Duterte made a similar faux pas when they started posting tarpaulins in the South egging the Davao mayor to make a run for the presidency. It was simply done in bad taste and was immediately stopped when those supporters realized that the outcome they intended to achieve – for the people to clamor for Sarah to run for president – backfired.
Politicking during this time of the COVID-19 crisis is just a sure fire way of committing political suicide. If Trillanes has good political advisers around him then their advice should have been for him to announce proposed measures that the national government can consider in the campaign to manage and mitigate the effects of the pandemic, or suggest steps to provide opportunities for the economic rebound of the country. By coming up with suggestions on how the government can help the people survive this COVID calamity Trillanes would have better endeared himself to the minds and hearts of the voters and increase his chances when election time comes around.
If he is minded at all he should follow what his other former colleagues in the Senate are doing in advancing their political ambitions, indirectly of course, by presenting viable options on how to resolve and address various national issues affecting the country.
Take for example Senator Panfilo Lacson, who reportedly is eyeing one of the two highest elective positions in the land, who recently announced that as a response to the reported return of 287 Chinese maritime militia vessels in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) the Filipino people should come up with a unified stand on the matter and suggested for the exploration of other means to address the issue such as using “parliamentary-to-parliamentary channels”, to preserve a balance of power in the region. By presenting viable options on how to resolve the growing concern in the WPS – the continuing unwarranted intrusion and encroachment of Chinese civilian and military forces in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Philippines – Senator Lacson is not only doing his job as a public servant but also serving notice to the public that he is actively engaged in the affairs of the State.
For all his time as a politician one would think that as a former senator, Trillanes would have learned the art of politics by now but it would seem that that is not the simply the case as shown by his ill-timed pronouncement of his plan to run for the highest public office.
Now for those who harbor designs to run for public office this next elections it would pay to heed the advice not to overtly and publicly discuss any political plans during this still calamitous period even when egged on by the 4th estate as well as the social media. It is better to simply say that now is not the time to play politics but instead come up with ways and means to address other more pressing issues that affect the nation.
For sure, now that Trillanes has revealed his political ambitions and intentions, his competitors will waste no time in destroying whatever good reputation he has achieved as a former public servant and will make sure that even at this early stage of the political circus he already has lost his chance to secure a higher public office in the next elections.
