ang pikon, talo

an expat who might have voted for gibo if he were home for the elections, but kept track through twitter, reacts to the losing camp’s dismay:

Such disappointment and disenchantment among the Pinoy Twitterati post election: lack of transparency, a better way to do this, an uninformed masa, a broken democracy, yadda yadda. To be fair, they all seem to be trying their best not to be too overtly bitter. But to anyone who can read between the lines, these guys are kinda embarrassing themselves. Mostly because they wouldn’t be whistling this tune if their candidate had won, now would they? No, they’d be proud Pinoys, ready to stand tall behind our flag, to shout from their twitter stream that Pinoys rule and our democracy rocks!

Here’s the sad part, guys, you were right the first time. There was a distressing lack of transparency. The political system is so broken and fixing it would lead to a better way of doing this. The masses still think it’s a popularity contest (Good God, Erap?! Again?!).  None of that equals a working democracy.

But in your frustration and disappointment you’re forgetting that this is so goddamned much better than what we had in the 60’s and 70’s with Marcos. So much safer and productive than what we have even now in Maguindanao — where resistance, where providing a choice, where even thinkingof exercising a right to choose equals a shallow anonymous grave. You’re  failing to appreciate that with martial law just a few short decades ago, and the Ampatuan massacre only half a year ago, the recent relatively uneventful elections (absolutely boring, actually) *is* something to flood your social networks about.

So get your heads out of your asses and accept defeat with the same grace and composure that most of your candidates did. We’re nowhere near the Hollywood/West Wing ending a Gibo win would have us celebrate, but this has got to be considered progress pa rin.

oo nga naman.   and enough with threats of migrating, which is so self-centered.   raising your hopes so high, in the first place, was rather naive and unrealistic.

sa kabilang banda, there’s kris aquino who’s also pikon, kahit panalo, over the facebook page kris aquino’s despedida party (18k members and counting).   of course no one expects her to leave, not just yet anyway.   if anything, people expected her to do a miriam and say “i lied”, sabay halakhak.   but really, it’s a warning that she’ll be under close watch.   she would be wise to stay out of politics (though i’m not sure how if she is to continue helping out president noynoy) cos people will pounce pounce pounce every time she says the politically incorrect thing (as in, foot in her mouth stuff a la “katas ng hacienda luisita”) and so, yeah, a despedida may not be so farfetched, whether noynoy gets it or not.