With the 2016 elections fast approaching, it's impossible to let a day pass without seeing something related to the presidentiables in my newsfeed. Though I haven't completely decided on the candidates that I'd want to support, I realized about a month ago that perhaps it's time to end this apathy; I must register for the upcoming election. When news about the possibility of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte running for president started to spread, I became even more convinced that it was worth being a registered voter this time. While I'm not 100% sold on the idea of Federalism, he is one candidate that I see myself campaigning for. Obviously, I was not alone in this. In the past two weeks, the clamor of people for him to run continued to grow and by the time the COCs were due to be filed, there were actually people camping outside the COMELEC office in Intramuros, waiting for him to file his CoC for the presidency.
The reality is, he never spoke of his desire to run for the country's highest post. In fact, he insisted that he is not running, over and over again. But did this stop people from believing in him? No. People from all walks of life continued to hope. I never cared about politics but this week, for the first time in my life, I found myself closely monitoring the situation, hoping for good news to come. Two days before the final deadline of COCs, people started shaving their heads to show their support for Duterte. Barber Shops and Salons in Davao City even offered free head shaving services. Even after he filed his CoC for re-election as Davao City's Mayor, the shaving continued. OPM artists even collaborated on a song to convince him to run. This is how much people believed in him and you must be one hell of a callous person not to be astounded by the kind of support people were giving.
The last four hours of filing was probably the longest for people who believed that he would somehow show up at the last minute in Intramuros. When his daughter posted a photo of her CoC around noon yeterday, I got teary-eyed and like most people, took it as a sign that it was right to believe in him all this time. One of his close friends posted on facebook that a private jet arrived in Davao to pick him up and it was like that moment in a Transformers movie when Optimus Prime came back to life to fight Megatron. I could hardly concentrate on work because I was refreshing my news feed every two minutes. Minutes before 5PM, a statement was released through his official Facebook account reiterating that he is not running for president. For a few moments, I was in denial and I was hoping with almost every fiber of my being that his account was just hacked. But alas, 5PM came and there was really no trace of him in COMELEC. It was over, it was time to wake up from the wild dream.
Prior to the last day of filing, I told my friends that even if he doesn't end up running for office it was nice to see a huge portion of the population coming together for a cause, despite knowing that their efforts may just be for nothing. Mabuti naman na hindi lang puro loveteam yung kaya nating ipa-trend. I am not surprised that many people felt heartbroken with the turn of events. I for one had a lot of emotions over it which made me realize that as with everything else in life, it's heartbreaking when something you've believed in for so long ends up not happening. Naniwala ka eh, kaya masakit. May pakialam ka eh, kaya masakit. Now I had to ask myself, was it worth it? If I had continued to allow apathy to rule over me, I wouldn't have been attached to the idea and I would just be nonchalant about whatever I see in my news feed. Instead, here I am writing about politics for the first time on my blog. To answer the question, yes it was worth it. It was a great feeling to have something to believe in, something to fight for even just for a few moments. What's even greater is witnessing that there were many of you that believed in the same dream, first time soldiers that decided to join the army because finally there was a battle worth fighting for. Maybe patriotism isn't dead after all.
While I know that most of the people that believed in having Duterte as the president are still trying to move on from the idea, I sincerely hope that this will not result to the the "new soldiers" abandoning the army. We should not forget that the battle we are fighting for is not limited to just having a specific person to run for president, it is about building a nation with the highest standards, it is about cleansing and transforming a corrupt government, one step at a time. Kung nagawa nating magkaisa para iconvince yung isang tao na tumakbo dahil sya ang karapatdapat para sa posisyon, siguro naman magagawa rin nating magkaisa para hindi manalo yung mga walang karapatan maging bahagi ng gobyerno. We should never settle. We need to continue fighting until we get it right.
