Archive - Commentary

Those egging President Rodrigo Duterte to run for vice president in the May 2022 elections are doing a grave disservice to the country. Mark them for their self-serving push.

If there's one thing that critics of the administration can do to make sure that their discontent leads to the opposition or independent candidates winning in the 2022 elections, it would be to encourage people who are not happy with the government's handling of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic to participate in the upcoming electoral exercise.

With the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) unlikely to go away soon, the main battleground for next year’s elections will certainly be on social media. Some early birds have, in fact, started advertising on Facebook, the most popular social network in the world, primarily for name recall.

Amidst the disaster of unabated rise of COVID-19 cases (breaching the 5, 000 mark last Saturday, the highest daily increase since Aug. 26, 2020), the Filipino people are being set up for another tragedy: an attempt to bastardize the Constitution for President Duterte to continue being in power after his term ends on June 30, 2022.

Incumbent legislators would do the country a great service if they seriously take a closer look at a provision in Republic Act (RA) 9369 that rendered premature campaigning a thing of the past.

The title of this column is borrowed from Jose Rizal’s masterpiece, Noli Me Tangere, which historian Ambeth Ocampo best explained in his 2016 opinion piece to mean “one is pretending not to appear interested in something, though in reality one is desperate to have it.”