The hopes and dreams of the deprived majority of the Filipino people to be uplifted from their wretched situation, sad to say, despite the promises of the sweet-talking politicians, who every election time succeed in making them believe in their demagoguery, will remain magnificent fantasies, illusory and unrealized.

No administration has ever succeeded in distributing the wealth and resources of the country to them by pursuing radical reforms in the economic structures that will threaten their hold on their riches and power.

Not even a Rodrigo Roa Duterte, who could have done it given his ironclad political will and absence of personal and selfish agenda, and obsession to provide the masses with equal opportunities to propel them to heights of intellectuality and economic progress, could accomplish what he set to do upon assuming the presidency.

He tried, but his obedience to the constitutional commands and legal restraints, as well as his abomination to be viewed as someone obsessed with perpetuating himself in power, prevented him from doing what should have been done, meaning dismantling the perpetual oppressive economic and political conditions that have chained the dispossessed masses of our people.

He is schooled in law and he embraced and adhered to it. His fealty to the letter of the law and his selflessness became his albatross. He could not free himself from the legal fiction he caged himself in.

To his mind, doing a major surgical procedure on body politics would have meant a revolution from within. He would have worked outside of the Constitution to demolish the oligarchic rule of the political and economic power holders.

But was he correct in interpreting the Constitution? The prime duty of the government under the Constitution is to serve and protect the very people that created the government. Since he was the duly elected President and head of state, necessarily it automatically became his primary duty to serve and protect the people. For that matter whoever is elected President, the latter must serve and protect the people.

By constitutional mandate, it becomes the sacred duty of every President to use the vast powers and the influence of the presidency to initiate, pursue and perform, ex propio vigore (with full force and effect), any and all acts that serve the best interest of the people and to give it protection.

Serving and protecting the Filipino people is the underlying basis for all the acts of the President. He can do no wrong if he performs any act geared toward serving and protecting the Filipino people.

The hopes and dreams of the Filipino people to truly receive the blessings of a genuine democracy will only come to fruition if they are finally brought to the promised land by the leader they have chosen.

Will the current President, or whoever comes after him, take to heart the constitutional duty of serving and protecting the Filipino people, in a manner that will challenge the purveyors of the status quo?

We await the response with bated breath.