May 2016 Elections: Mar Roxas

I’m not eligible to vote this coming election day, since I didn’t register. It’s just as well, because it allows me the capacity to see the events leading up to the May 2016 elections with a more objective eye; I don’t have anything at stake, and I don’t really care about who wins, so long as they don’t terribly screw up our country.

But seeing as to how we’re seven days from the elections, I’d like to throw an impassioned view of things into the overfilled hat of anger, hate, and disillusion that’s pretty palpable throughout social media. There are five presidential candidates, five vice presidential candidates, and two nuisance candidates (Trillanes, I’m looking at you), so I’m going to be filling up the next five days with my opinion of who’s running, and why.

Let’s start with the standard bearer for the LP. I’m terribly critical of how PNoy ran the country in four of the six years he was in power. I was quite happy with him during his first two terms, then started seeing the chinks in his executive decisions right around the time Jesse Robredo died in that aviation accident. And while I was also a huge, huge fan of Mar pre-PNoy, his track record as the secretary of various government agencies under PNoy’s leadership was middling at best.

Suffice it to say that I don’t believe that Mar will be a terribly efficient president. His president kept him in the dark during Mamasapano - which was surprising considering that he was the head of the DILG - and he was fairly useless during Yolanda. He relied on stunt after stunt to get the people to care for him, and now that people are campaigning for him because he’s the safest bet sounds just like when people voted for PNoy because, again, he was the safest bet.

But whereas we had weak decision-making skills with PNoy, with Mar we have terrible interpersonal skills. He couldn’t negotiate a deal with Hong Kong when he was sent there after the disaster at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium (VP Jejomar Binay actually won brownie points for handling that more efficiently than he did), and people don’t seem to follow his word to the letter. I don’t think Mar is a terrible planner; in fact, if left to his own devices, I think Mar has some very good ideas for the country. But people just won’t listen to him.