It is uncertain to conclude that change has come

Noynoy Aquino and Jejomar Binay’s elections usher in a new period of hope for most Filipinos, though not in the same degree as that brought by the election of America’s Barack. Our hope is the hope of someone who suffered a decade-long thirst for genuine change.  Sometimes it was desperate, oftentimes it was frustrated.  Since Cory’s time we have been looking forward for such change, only to be disappointed by stubborn corruption and violation of human rights, things which, because of their repetition have sooner been accepted as part of our culture.

The fact that the Arroyo administration left a demoralized country in the wake of debt and distrust heightened the people’s impulsive cries for a hero. Those are the dark times when the people were looking for someone to uplift their hearts and their lives. If there was none, then they felt it imperative to create one that they think at least approximates the character of someone who in the past had embodied the people’s description of heroism. This was when Noynoy, then completely unknown outside the elitist circle, made his entry point goaded by kingmakers who told the people that Cory’s image lives in him. Indeed the people saw Cory’s image on him, and accepted him in absence of any other appropriate candidate.

Vice President Jojo Binay, the true self-made man, is indeed the best outcome of the 2010 elections. Having been trailing to LP’s Roxas in the pre-election surveys, he is a come-from-behind stunner, one who has brought to his side even the difficult South to secure a narrow victory. It may be that until now I doubt everything of his platforms, but testaments of his strategy, character and humanity as mayor of industrial Makati are enough to consider him deserving of support for the attainment of his goals.

The day is not yet ripe for assessing what Noynoy and Binay could do. It is rash to conclude once again that the recent election is “historic” in the sense that we have elected a Lincoln or an Obama (which the press has been doing ever since the beginning). It is even very premature to come up with a 68-page magazine feature of anyone of the two.