I had only one takeaway after reading Cocoy’s latest piece The President Priest:

Platform, please.

But before I go on, allow me the honour of first giving credit where it is due, as the eminent blogger Rom had already beat me to the punch in some aspects of what I will go on to express in this blog post. Presumably addressing most political commentators, she writes:

We get it. Left and right, people are declaring their intentions to run for president; each one claiming to be riding the crest of public clamor; nearly all of them running on a platform of righteous anger and sweet revenge.

And pundits – both on-line and in the mainstream – continuously feed the egos of these wannabees by devoting column-inches and blog posts to their merest utterances. But more than just feeding egos, this predilection to writing up every little off-the-cuff remark, every bluster, and every knee-jerk reaction of these aspirants for the presidency (not presidentiables, mind you, because in the strictest sense of even that made-up word, they are not presidentiable) adds the patina of legitimacy to what would otherwise be dismissed as plain and simple chicanery.

My humble contribution to this brilliant message delivered by my most venerable peer in this corner of the Pinoy blogosphere is a simple follow-through challenge — a handy footnote that I recommend be added at the end of every subsequent piece of punditry to be dished out on the whoevers and whatevers of the coming 2010 Presidential Elections:

Platform, plez.

I realised after posting the above along with the rest of the comment in Cocoy’s piece …

If he has none [such platform] to present, then he’s just another trapo because his pitch is quite traditional; i.e., appealing to Pinoys’ vacuous low-thinking-applied sensibilities.

… that we may as well be using “Platform, plez” as a standard reality check to just about EVERY snippet of insight or “endorsement” we are yet to see in the blogosphere and Philippine Media concerning any particular bozo making a bid for that lucrative seat in Malacanang.

I propose that any kind of “insight” on any “candidate” for the next Presidential “elections” that does not pass my brilliantly simple platform, plez test, be considered for filing in our growing archives of useless political “insight”.

There simply are no more excuses for politicians not having a platform of some sort, much less this one:

[...] but then again, panlilio and all the other politicians yeing the post are holding out and will likely continue to do so until after they have filed their certificates of candidacy. umiiwas muna ata para di magkagayahan ng plataporma [maybe they are stalling for now to avoid politicans' plagiarising one another's platform].

The irony here is that the people and The Media possess the power to FORCE these politician bozos to reveal their platforms NOW. By accepting that they are “holding out” for whatever reason, we are implying that availability of said information is subject to their terms.

Payag ba kayo niyan?

Ironic, because turning a different face, we are so quick to wave our fists and chant Patalsikin na! Now na! on Manila’s streets at the drop of a hat. Yet here we are deliberately overlooking the absence of the whole point of presenting one’s self as a candidate to consider for the Top Job. If we go by the principle that one wants to become president because there is something he/she envisions for our society over the next six years, then the inexcusability of not having a platform NOW becomes quite clear.

I’d accept it if the case were that we the electorate and The Media were just simply too limpdicked to demand that all these “presidentiables” reveal their platforms (we have a trackrecord of being such flaccid citizens, anyway).

But the more interesting question is this:

Does it even occur to us to demand that a platform be articulated by these candidates?

The disturbing answer to that question has been staring us in the face for quite some time now:

No it doesn’t.

That we have allowed dozens of political “parties” and dozens of presidential “candidates” and thousands of political “analyses” to propagate none of which deliver the slightest hint of a vision for our hapless lot says a lot about how we see democracy working for us.

It’s one thing to be afraid to demand that our candidates reveal their respective platforms. But it is another for such a demand never to have occurred to us in the first place.

The first implies a fear for the need to think (something I’ve strongly asserted many times), but the latter is even worse — it implies a complete lack of any inclination to do so.

Anybody can wear a T-Shirt…

[Addendum: See the new Platform, plez animated graphic below. First seen online on FilipinoVoices!]

============
Join us on Facebook!

Fatal error: Call to undefined function p75HasVideo() in /homepages/39/d169067170/htdocs/voices/wp-content/themes/NewFV/single-default.php on line 57