A graceful acceleration

When Senator Grace Poe topped the senatorial race in  May 2013, she caught many political observers and contenders by surprise. In fact, as late as January or a month before the official campaign period, she was placing at the middle half of pollster surveys, albeit within a comfortable position of certainly grabbing a seat at the Philippines Senate.

By end of the campaign season, however, her ratings had shot to third place. And what followed next was a victory that vindicated her father, the late King of Philippine Movies, Fernando Poe, Jr.  who lost in the widely believed fraudulent 2004 presidential contest.

Senator Poe matched her rapid rise to the position with an equally rapid legislative fervor.

Buoyed by her popularity, she quickly became the face of the Freedom of Information (FOI) advocacy, along with former Akbayan representative Risa Hontiveros-Baraquiel. If the passage of the FOI bill at the Senate is any indication at all of Senator Poe’s leadership and capacity to mobilize popular and official support for needed legislation, it could only point to an emerging consensus among keen observers of politics and policy: she means business. One that can deliver. And quite quickly.

Her public appearances, speeches, and showings in Senate hearings grabbed headlines, not for their sound bites, nor for their oratorical eloquence, but rather for their incisiveness.

And even when she quizzed government officials invited to Senate hearings, she was sincerely inquisitive, never inquisitorial.

This is why, while her rise to the Senate was surprising, her present 2nd place ranking among popular contenders for the 2016 presidential elections should not come as unexpected.

There are sectors who say such a move is premature and that Senator Poe needs experience and time to learn the ropes of governance.

“It’s too fast”, those who are skeptical would claim.

But if there’s anything the Philippines needs after what many in the metro would describe as a 6-year traffic jam of a government under President Benigno S. Aquino III, it would be some speeding up of sociopolitical reforms and economic development.

Travel light

Senator Grace Poe’s rapid rise to the apex of influence in Philippine politics parallels the kind of globally integrated society and culture the country will have to confront within the next decade. In the last decade, global issues from the growth of new terrorist networks to epidemics required  swift but effective inter-governmental decisions and interventions. It may even be argued that these same issues would have been deterred had key policymakers pre-empted their rise with prior decisiveness and foresight. But while the impact of global risks exponentially accelerated, so too did opportunities for high-impact social and economic transformation.

The winners in the past decade were those who quickly learned how to exploit the fast-changing circumstances to their advantage. The losers, meanwhile, were those who were dragged by the burden and baggage they carried in launching the assault on these transformative openings.

It is true that the Aquino government won for the Philippines renewed trust in the political, especially democratic process or a few points up the confidence of global investors and market players.

But the same who believed in the promised outcomes were also stuck in the traffic jams of the metro or in the ports around the country and had to patiently, and for some, impatiently, even violently, wait for the green light or their ordered shipments.

The traffic jam where the Philippines found itself stuck in the last 6 years is the outcome of nothing other than the Aquino government not heeding every backpacker’s mantra: travel light.

Because many of the prime movers of today’s economy, including the average middle-class employee were not yet socialized in the attention span shortening multi-tabbing culture of today, Aquino’s government was able to bid some time and ask for some sacrifice. Willingly or unwillingly, the Philippines public acquiesced.

Nonetheless, the public’s acquiescence to the incumbent administration’s plea for self-sacrifice and for patience does not indicate the administration’s effectiveness. If at all, it points to the social lethargy that the government unleashed when it proved incapable of clearing the way for things to move faster.

Grace not baggage

By 2016 and beyond, however, speed – of internet connectivity, transport and travel, supply-chain movements, integration into networks, and customer service response – will largely determine human, including, governmental survival.

And a political administration who brings into Malacanang a heavy baggage that will prevent its ability to move and dispose of things, issues, and challenges quickly is bound to be another 6-year drag that may even lead the population towards another round of social or at least, regime instability.

Senator Poe herself is in a position to travel light and thus to achieve the speed of disposition that the Philippines needs today. As a darling of both the administration and opposition coalition and having moved on and forgiven the past that was done to her and her family, Senator Poe can simultaneously look into the past without the burden of retribution and into the future without the weight of restitution.

But if she indeed runs for the presidency, Senator Poe has to shun the “continuity” narrative that the ruling coalition has been deploying to justify why their anointed candidate should win.

In case she runs under the administration however, and in fair recognition of the gains under Aquino and the ruling coalition’s leadership, Senator Poe should frame her future government as one of accelerating what the Aquino government has initiated.

Not the violent acceleration characteristic of military assaults or of juvenile delinquency, but of grace.

And she can only achieve such program if she herself continues in her political sojourn as light as she did when she took the MRT ordeal some months ago. – Rappler.com

RR Rañeses is an Instructor at the Department of Political Science, Ateneo de Manila University and a political and security risks consultant for an Asia-wide business intelligence firm. He blogs at http://rrraneses.wordpress.com.