Veeps and sock puppets

“By taking the challenge to lead the centerpiece charge against drugs and its criminals, she could have altered the optics and shown a readiness for the presidency.

There is an uncanny commonality among commentators, whether they are for Leonor Robredo’s appointment as “Drug Czarina” or against it, and those who’ve taken positions on the matter with vigor and deep concern. On both sides of the political aisle there is concern on Robredo’s probity, competence and intellectual ability to tackle a job that would necessarily pit her against criminals responsible for the illegal drug trade that escalated during the incumbency of Benigno Aquino III, his Justice and Interior Department officials and the Liberal Party she belongs to.

With such firepower previously placed behind the drug menace, it is understandable that she would balk at the prospect of heading the charge and effectively test her own competence. Note the knee-jerk reaction of Robredo’s official mouthpiece as he expressed her imagined fears of having the successes or failures set on her lap, holding her accountable.

Never mind the crusted cliché, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Either she hasn’t read up on French political history (qu’une grande responsabilité est la suite inséparable d’un grand pouvoir) and the speeches and early writings of Sir Winston Churchill, or she hasn’t seen “Spider-Man” the movie. The first two require an education in political theory. The other, a two-hour lunch break.

Historic political maxim or not, challenges are inconvenient, especially for those simply tasked as a spare tire and upon whom little is expected. The offered position would thrust her from her comfort zone of merely criticizing any matter she can pin the presidency on, and require her to seriously engage her medulla oblongata far beyond what her cavum oris has currently achieved.

Another maxim, “action speaks louder than words” will come into play.

We raise these issues on the great responsibility that the President has offered her, not as an assigned task compelled by the presidency and the responsibility to carry on a state-sponsored advocacy, but as a choice she is allowed to trash. The question of her competence and her independence to think on her own is also being raised by the public, whether they be from the opposition or not, where responsibility and accountability are concerned. More will be demanded of her.

Simply read between the lines from astute political constituencies keenly discerning and observant of the hidden hands, the puppet strings, the powers, whisperers and insidious influences surrounding Robredo and the various issues she has taken to whittle away at the presidency she prospectively hopes to someday gain.

Given a politician’s persona is a product of a propaganda machine, analyze the public discourse. Some believe Robredo is not thinking on her own and has fallen under the influence of a cabal of Rasputin-like advisers, sans substance and merit save for proximate wet and wagging tongues constantly active in the vicinity of her ear.

The upside of ascribing her actions and words to her advisers is clear. She is relieved of direct accountability. The downside is the graphic optics of a sock puppet or a wooden marionette dangling from a puppeteer’s strings simply parroting a ventriloquist’s words.

Unfortunately, it would not however be the first time that such imagery has been attached to Robredo. Her lack of substantive solutions to concerns she raises not only validates the allegory, but each time she opens her mouth, the imagery comes into high definition focus. That is the case in her solution-less stance against the anti-illegal drugs advocacy and her pronouncements from which she backtracked. Do the arithmetic. Two steps backwards and one step forward yield a net negative.

Thus the public suspects that Robredo is merely a pawn or a puppet of big businesses and the opposition. By taking the challenge to lead the centerpiece charge against drugs and its criminals, she could have altered the optics and shown a readiness for the presidency. Unfortunately, by balking at the challenge she’s revalidated fears regarding her competence and cluelessness.