IT was a chaotic day at the Commission on Elections last Saturday, with political parties trooping in to complete their slates, hoping to firm up and solidify their chances of winning in the 2022 presidential contest.
Those caught flabbergasted by the spectacle, who couldn’t accept their feebleness in the arena of politics, have wrongly dismissed the antics as a mockery and insult. Their losing criticism against a constitutionally permitted provision on the doctrine of “substitution” in our elections is but barking toothless cries.
They’re purely wails of the overtaken losers who cannot and have not the ability to wage a real political war. In the art of (political) war, they are those who faint and lose right at the very outset. Outsmarted and tricked, I would not wonder if they will lose big this election again like what happened to them in 2016 and 2019. Their disapproval is unnecessary and bereft of basis. There’s no mockery and insult in what they call “sarswela” at Comelec.
The decent losers
There’s no question of propriety, neither of morality on candidates withdrawing their candidacies and substituting others. No, not even abuse. The remedial avenue is so expressly and provided for in our electoral laws. If there are any clowns in the 2022 elections arena, they are those who are outwitted and beaten in tactics. Pushed to sides and reduced as spectators, because of their inability to wage a real fight, they have become mere chanters of their own game when they could have been the winning actors. They have effectively lost in the political limelight they so critically need.
It is not a good sign to effectively lose the limelight of politics this early. For the self-proclaimed decent wannabees, I find their being pushed to the gutter of the observers an omen of another huge defeat. Unless they would get rid of their propensity to make clownish claims of being only the decent and the real deal, the only qualified among the rest, all the more they make their candidacy hard to sell. That is precisely the reason they lost big in the 2016 and 2019 elections.
The wise are the winning team
The wisdom in strategizing an election contest belongs to the wise and the sincere of candidates. The clowns, the gullible, and the weak have no place in a hotly contested post like the presidency. Only the astute of politicos can make claims on the claims of the winning side. They will take no chances. They will play whatever is expressly provided by law regardless, if alone the single act of political maneuvering will secure an election. So if your bet has been pushed to the sides, maybe they critically lack the mark of victors. No. They won’t make it again this time.