The Construct

Author’s Note: Did this quite hastily the day after the SONA. Forgot to click the Publish button.

I’ve been looking forward to Noynoy’s SONA not in a strictly political standpoint, but as a discourse analyst. Having wrestled with GMA’s nine SONAs, I’m intensely curious about the linguistic profile of Noynoy’s. Now that it has been delivered, I can give it a go.

Tagalugin mo kasi.The SONA contains 1,256 unique words with more than 60% of which are Filipino words. As such, analyzing the SONA’s text through existing semantic tagging software will be problematic since the software will fail to accurately tag 60% of the data. Interestingly, the “at” string, which can occur as both Filipino (as conjunction) and English (as preposition) only occurs as the Filipino conjunction.

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By noon of June 30, we’ll have a new president.

I really find it funny that it’s been declared a special non-working holiday. Well, sure, quite a lot of people voted for Noynoy and those people would probably celebrating once their “manok” assumes position.

Others have been calling for a “ceasefire” on criticism against Noynoy as president for his first few months as president. Grace periods are for pansies.

As a Filipino one can only be hopeful for things to come but isn’t it one’s duty to be vigilant of things. Let’s face it, Noynoy is not the new face of Philippine politics. If he’d be one thing, he’d be the poster child of oligarchy and the repressive elite.

Winning the election is one thing. Transforming the nation to make winners of us all is another. We’ll see.

In other news, the Lakers beat the Celtics in the NBA Finals and that’s just too damn bad.

That probably happened to you. You fancied trying out a restaurant for the first time. You plunk down on your seat. You flip through the menu from end to end. Then you flip through it again. There’s not one thing that you’d like to eat. Then you think whether you’d get up and leave or just settle for what you think is their most palatable dish even if it’s named “Binarurot na Tambakol” or something.

That’s exactly the feeling I have looking at the choices among the candidates for president in the 2010 elections. Here are my current takes on the presidential candidates.

• Noynoy Aquino – The guy thinks that the presidency is a birthright. Not to mention that he doesn’t have any accomplishments to boot. If this guy wins, Kris will be the most powerful woman in the country.
• JC de los Reyes – Uh. Yeah. This guy.
• Jamby Madridal – Not really aware of her agenda so pretty hard to tell. Has a bit of a leftist leaning.
• Erap Estrada – ~@_@~ (Not a big fan of emoticons, but come on…)
• Dick Gordon – Good administrator from what you can see from SBMA track record so he just might be a good chief executive. He seemed to have slacked off for the past years though. And he’s running with Bayani.
• Gibo Teodoro – On paper, one of the better candidates. But he’s running as the administration’s The Chosen One so he’s like steak with shit as gravy.
• Eddie Villanueva – I don’t seem to be comfortable with voting a guy who straddles that line between Church and State as Head of State?
• Manny Villar - The “I wuz poor” thing has gotten old. He’s been rich for so long.

The thing is, with a dish, you really won’t know if it’s any good unless you’ve tried it.

For those who watched professional wrestling, there’s a term they use for positive cheers – “pop.” The easiest way to get a pop is to mention the town in which they hold an event or refer to something of patriotic in nature. Americans (at least wrestling fans) just love chances to do a “USA! USA!” chant. That’s what they call a “cheap pop.”

Noynoy Aquino announced that he will be running for president in 2010. There he was, flashing the old “L” (Laban) sign. A cheap pop if I ever saw one. A cheap pop indeed.

All this whole Noynoy running for president was simply triggered by the death of his mother. Some consider it a resurrection of the whole People Power sentiment but it’s simply a play on people’s nostalgia as far as I am concerned. Perhaps even an opportunity for some other personalities to get some babyface brownie points while at it.

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When Barack Obama ran and won as president, I was among those wishing that someone in our political landscape would rise up and emerge as a similar personality. One with strong conviction and one who doesn’t believe in the control of the elite.

With election looming, the same sentiment seems to echo – a hope for a Pinoy version of Obama. Obama’s election as president of the free world seems to have every politician’s gunning for a “statesman” image. Everyone wants to project that young, learned, and charismatic image. But is that even possible for politicians here in the Philippines?

Given today’s slate of “presidentiables,” no one even comes close to Obama. Why? Name a politician who has cut abs? Okay. So that’s mundane but that sure makes a lot of difference. But how about this profile – young, humble roots, community organizer, non-trapo, and liberal? Makes you think really hard, doesn’t it?

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