Am I asking for the moon?
By Antonio Montalvan II
Inquirer News Service

I WANT not just the political system changed. I want the politicians changed as well.

I want a system free from the greed of our country's ruling elite. I cannot entrust my future to politicians who are so full of themselves with their moronic tantrums.

Could I entrust my future to a Jinggoy Estrada or a Loi Ejercito? Or to a Lito Lapid? Or to a Tootsie Guingona, freshly harvested from his family orchard of balimbings yet already behaving like a trapo? It is perhaps true: Con-Ass is, pardon the language, only for pompous asses.

Would I want my future mapped out by an Imee Marcos? God forbid, the Filipinos forgetting the accountability of the Marcoses. The war for accountability can never be waged through sheer hypocrisy.

I want a system where all the Imelda Marcoses, all the Erap Estradas, all the cheaters and stealers found guilty of making their own "Hello Garci" calls (and there are many) go to jail. For it is important for us to live under a society that recognizes what is right and what is wrong. That is a fundamental virtue that should not be selective and applicable only to a few scapegoats and political pet peeves. Enough with the tomfoolery!

I want a system of genuine nationalists, not of blabbering nationalists whose unprincipled and changing alliances go by the shifting sands of Philippine politics, never mind if they make strange bedfellows. Having dud nationalists is the last thing we need.

I want a system insulated for all times from these harbingers of idiocy -- our present crop of leaders, national, local and whatever. I do not want to see their wives, husbands, children, brothers, sisters, cousins and in-laws play "merry go-round" with the sacred elective positions in our government, as though we, voters, were the most gullible fools of this earth. Dynasts you all are, no matter how many times you deny it to death.

I want a system where the poor do not vote according to the wishes of the highest bidder. For here we have a system of politicians whose words grandiloquently proclaim noble political visions and goals but whose ways and interests are very much like those of the dark underworld. Exploitation of the poor is one of the gravest sins of our politicians, who are now destined for Hades.

I want a system free forever from local mayors and governors who behave like monarchs, potentates and egomaniacs as they treat local government units as their personal rubber stamps. I want local leaders who sit for only one term and, together with all their relatives, prohibited forever from running for any office anywhere, anytime. Why, they are no gods! I am certain our lives will be better without them.

I want a political system where major decisions come down not from an ivory tower in Manila but take into account the angst and yearnings of faceless ordinary Filipinos even in the remotest countryside. I do not want to submit papers to a bureaucrat who is based in Manila and who does not understand my wholeness and my being.

I want a system that puts food on the family tables of our languishing poor who number in the millions, not a system that is mired in the silly gridlocks of senseless political grandstanding and debate.

I want a system where the rich resources of Mindanao go to Mindanao's marginalized people, not to the coffers of an uncaring Manila that thinks all talk of Mindanao secession is just an empty threat. I dream of a Mindanao that is not a victim of a juvenile and trigger-happy mind disposed to fire guns and explode bombs as a strategy for silencing opposition.

I want a system where the Philippines stands proud as a sovereign among sovereigns, not a puppet republic in an archaic world dichotomy prescribed by a self-appointed global policeman. I want a system with the chutzpah to take up the cudgels for the Aung San Suu Kyis of this world.

Am I making impossible demands? I think not. A Charter change for federalism would be good. Jose "Pepe" Abueva is correct: Mindanao is the cradle of the federalist movement. Come to think of it, power is a commodity that is most effective only when it is near. In this sense, Charter change that includes federalism will have my awe and my reverence.

This is precisely why I cannot entrust Charter change and my future to congressmen and senators and all the purveyors of political patronage, who have only discredited themselves and have long been on the road to self-destruction; and it is definitely not the road less traveled.

What bliss it would be to have them all impeached!

Comments to monta@cu-cdo.edu.ph