Primaries, primaries.

POST-SABBATICAL NOTES. AUGUST 10, 2014. SUNDAY. N2. 
Primaries, primaries. 

THE HAWAII ELECTORATE has spoken. For the Democrats, Abercrombie is out, Ige is in. 

That is politics over here--and a really mature one. Candidates of the same party slugging it out and must prove to the voters who is deserving. 

Or, if both are deserving, who is MORE deserving. 

That could have been the case of these two Democrats, one putting in 40 years of his professional life as a career politician, away from his original intention of becoming a university academic at the UH Manoa, and another, an engineer, and decades younger than the first one.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser analyzed the honorable defeat of the incumbent, and came up with some factors: Abercrombie alienating the teachers, senior citizens and pensioners, and cause-oriented people like the environmentalists.

For four years, the governor made it possible for the economy to rebound. To do so, he had to make hard decisions, and it looks like some of these hard decisions affected these people who did not given their votes to him but to Ige.

The lead of Ige over Abercrombie is gaping chasm between mountains as if the mountains were shaken by a tremor, and a political Andreas fault showed itself for the Hawaii people to see.

This is how it is in Hawaii--this political maturity that the Philippines must learn: you go good, that is not enough. You must do BETTER.

Good is not enough. Even BETTER is not enough. Next time you ask for a mandate, the electorate will hold you to account.

In the Philippines, just give them a promise of the good life. That promise is good enough, like the ringing promise of Erap Estrada at the Luneta, one promise I heard and believed he would fulfill but never did. Which led me to join the others on the streets, one of them the March to Jericho at the Senate where, on our way, Fernando Poe Jr's paid hacks and activists, in Fernando Poe t-shirts, heckled us.

Political maturity, anyone?

Ah, one thing: many of the peoples of the Philippines, I think, do not understand what the primaries are all about.

I was one of those who came in to cast their votes late in the afternoon, before 6 PM, and I saw those Philippine-sounding last names unsigned, unsigned, unsigned.

Primaries for the former peoples of the Philippines? I am not sure if they understand what these things are.

WPH/