Alan Peter’s snap election: Making corruption a shared sin

Last week, the saint of the Senate, the ambassador of Jesus Christ and all things compassionate, Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, called for a snap election and the mass resignation of all government officials, from the President all the way down to legislators, to purify the land of the sins of corruption.

- RONALD LLAMAS

How radical of him, right? If we didn't know any better, we would have mistaken him for a revolutionary who wants to smash the system. But let's not delude ourselves. Alan Peter is the poster boy of political dynasties, not of social change. He sits in the Senate together with his sister, while his wife conveniently runs Taguig. His political dynasty embodies the very decay that he now pretends to cure.

Just like the snap election called by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, Cayetano's "national reset" has nothing to do with purging corruption, but a mere resetting of the scoreboard for the same old players. Back then, Marcos wanted to cling to power through a rigged election. Today, Cayetano wants to cleanse himself and his fellow dynasts with the holy water of a "fresh mandate."

Yes, he said that incumbent officials, himself included, should be barred from running for one election cycle. But come on, do we still believe anything this man says? This is the same guy who agreed to share the House speakership with Representative Lord Allan Velasco, only to cling to the Speaker's chair when his time was up. Only when the House majority overwhelmingly rejected him did he embarrassingly vacate the post.