Bayani Fernando

If the next Pulse Asia or Social Weather Station surveys would mind including in the list BF as a now rabid presidential wannabe, couldn’t the results be dramatically changed? I hazard that it will in much the same
fashion as when Bayani Fernando won in that singing contest shown on nationwide TV. This time around, we just might need a singing president than a chronically smiling one despite all protest actions or howls thrown in her path.

This is a biased view but its politics might prove correct. When BF was city mayor of Marikina, all that needs to be done may generally be said to have been achieved. He made it one of best cities in the world that it has become a model in many other towns or cities in nearly all aspects of local governance. As if to replicate his accomplishments as city mayor, BF is about done with having made the Metro the better place it wasn’t for many years.

If he becomes president, RP as a whole, can possible be a source of pride – the much need infrastructures will be built in a day than in a century, more people will have to go to work than burn the day sniffing, more
vehicles on more roads, more people on more sidewalks, vendors in stalls, and all sorts of guerilla-type businesses become a no-no, et cetera, et cetera.

This is no praise for the man that discovered betters ways of doing his job as he presumably learns them too from the countries he went to. Not all really applies well but most do as every new change introduced has become the product of study even in that simple identification of points for U-turn slots. We hate U-slots but would even hate more traffic jams. We hate overpasses but our lives are safe with them. More can be built as more will be needed.

Now, BF is caught to have already made his announcement – “Gusto ko lang pong bigyan linaw, ako po’y tuloy na tuloy sa pagtakbo sa 2010” – in his MMDA weekly Radio Program. And adding, he says – “Kanya kanya naman ng survey yan. Basta ako tuloy ang plano ko.” In short, BF has decided to run despite knowledge of what the surveys upon surveys show. As far as he is concerned, I think that he is echoing what political analysts Prof. Clarita Carlos is saying all along. For BF, “hindi pa tapos ang boksing”.

What merits observation is his seeming non-chalance on whether any political party such as the Lakas will have to drop him or prop him. The man just doesn’t anymore have to mind it or even care. There is just a
plan he has entertained in his mind, and he just goes for it. We can recall any number of times when he got the ire of not few mayors because of the proposals from him they did not agree with. But he was there to defend it and defended them to the point of final implementation. So, it is true – “BF gets it done”.

I happen to have lived in Marikina the best of my productive years and no matter how biased I could be for the man they call “Bayani”, as anyone else could attest, the works are there and can speak well of the man they could fondly see as the “hero”. Never came a time for Marikina to flood ever again and BF likewise crushed the myth that Marikina is situated in so-called “Marikina fault line”. Now, maybe any scientist can say, there had not been a Marikina fault time in the first place.

Unlike most cabinet secretaries who are now contemplating of running for president or senator or congressman, from where I stand, BF is not one who wants to ride in a magic carpet of sort – especially at government expense. Not one is heard to have doubted BF’s no nonsense accomplishments of projects or programs as scheduled to be implemented. Perhaps, we want a president we can see where there is work to be done as he wants to do it himself – say a school, a dam, a bridge, whatever.

In many other ways, I hate BF because he will not be one to be heard talk like a lawyer, walk like a king, act like untouchable. To my mind, BF is one of us – he is us. Truly, BF can walk the talk.

In the end, it depends on what we want from a president. If we want someone who can tirelessly engage himself in long legal or political discourse, there should be one in the marketplace. If we want those who are
more in promises than in tangible accomplishments, then they are many a dozen. Nor those whose voice are so loud and clear only before broadcast medium and their faces even 10 times larger than real, then again, many abound.

In short, we need a man who can show us where our monies go. This man, it appears to me, is BF. This is not an endorsement however like it reads but it has proven therapeutic value – to cynics like us, to heretics like us, to pundits like us. Or, that , at least, I like to believe.

In case however BF decides any other way, say run as senator, I must admit, he will not have my vote. That would indicate to me that he has cave in to pressure and that his well-intentioned sense of service must have been violated too badly. I hope BF does not turn his back and that he will chase that dream to become the next president. He should be a good president given self-evident proofs to this effect. Good luck, Fernando!

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