I Miss the President!!!

The President in Pensive Mode

I sorely miss our president! I'm sure that the huge media enterprises that helped catapult him to office could not tolerate this brewing boredom. Save for a few rather inconsequential pronouncements and scandalous indiscretions, like the "used Porsche" hulabalo, the Philippine president has been enjoying his presidential life in dreamlike obscurity, in as far as public policy is concerned.

The president, who calls himself P-noy (I still don't know the significance of the name is and I am not expecting to find any), has been a fixture in the presidential office for quite sometime.

I can still very well remember, almost a year ago, a man with receding hairlines came aboard the "heavily-armored" Mercedes-Benz W221, official state car, with the then Malacanang occupant, Gloria "the much maligned" Arroyo. They were quite cordial. Then it did occur to me that he was actually the eventual sucessor of the then-President of the Republic. After having been elected overwhelmingly into office with great help from his sister Kring-Kring A.Yap, the Empress Dowager of the Philippine Cinema, and the Yellow Fever Movement (similar to the bubonic plague), P-noy embarked on his new role as the president of the republic. The job came as an added burden considering that it is common knowledge that the he is first and foremost a shooter.

In an apparent create-a-kind-of-commotion-designed-to-attract-attention-tactic, the president may shoot and fire anyone on site without prior provocation. The most recent victim to his shooting and firing spree is the just resigned Ombudsman (or ombuds-woman if we want to be more politically correct), Merceditas Gutierez (no relation whatsoever to the state car earlier mentioned). The om-buds-woman was about to be impeached by the president's congressional allies for her "apparent failure" to persistently persecute...err.. prosecute individuals like the former president, who has been publicly accused of amassing several political enemies during her stint, being the focal point of some corruption scandals and electoral fraud accusations, more notoriously the "hello garci" scandal. To avert her inevitable political demise, the om-buds-woman tendered her resignation before her accuser. 

To his credit, however, the president's tenure has not been that boring through and through. There have been several landmark cases of which P-noy had been either directly or indirectly involved. 

Not too long ago, the Republic had been put to international limelight when an insignificant number of Hong Kong visitors were held hostage inside a tourist bus in the Imperial City of the Republic. Who could ever forget that day? That was my mom's birthday. The incident marred the relatively cordial relationship between China and the Republic. It also prompted his administration to send a high-level embassage to China. How high the embassage would have been, we could not fathom for his administration eventually cancelled the plan knowing for a fact that the deaths of those Chinese would not significantly reduce the mammoth Chinese population (they need several atomic bombs to do that). 

Quite recently, in March, the Republic was again brought to the center-stage in the international community again when a few of his relatives, called Pinoys, were sentenced to death by way of lethal injection for acting as carriers not of H1N1 virus but of narcotics. It would have been better if they were carrying H1N1 virus with them, the Chinese would have been more complacent, but drugs? No! This time the tried to prevent the deaths of these very important personages by sending P-noy's vice president to China. The Chinese authorities had to hold off the execution, but for a short period of time only.  They did have to carry out the sentence, "in accordance with Chinese law." So on separate occasions in March, the three very important personages were put to their respective final rests. 

To cap all these, his job as the chief administrator of the Republic would not be complete without a few bickering with the Influential Bishops of the Universal Church-Philippine Chapter. A squabble or two with the Bishops can be considered the crowning jewel of one's administration. This administration is no exception. P-noy, as the president of the republic, asserts  his primacy when it comes to planning a family, despite not having one to call his own.  The Bishops, being the guardian of moral uprightness, say otherwise, and further quipped that P-noy may very well remain "single for life" due to his advanced age. 

These are but a few of the president's most cherised events in his political life and his life as President of the Republic. These and a few tidbits about the President's Women occupy the memory bank I specifically reserved for the President of the Republic. The memory is quite drab and empty. I was expecting the president to update our standing foreign policy, define his stand on international trade and globalization/trade liberalization, define his stand on labor in as far as benefits and compensation are concerned and provide a clear cut policy to secure our energy sector, reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels, secure our environment, among many others. But, I did not hear any. So despite his face being plastered all over the place, I still miss the president, so badly.