Noynoy Aquino is a Presidential candidate banking on memories: a campaign that has run the gamut of remembrance and amnesia. Though the demands of the campaign would require that he should be his own man and not invoke the memory of his parents, Noynoy Aquino cannot be spoken of in terms of “who he is.” He is, no matter how much you cut up and dissect and butcher the pre-campaign period campaign period, the son and scion of Ninoy and Cory.
Lorenzo Tanada III has acknowledged the pink elephant in the room: that “Cory Magic” is wearing off on The Scion. Memories, for Noynoy’s campaigners and supporters, can be both a blessing and a curse. While there is no denying the importance and the relevance of his parents, we are dealing with a generation that has no living memory of the People Power Revolution. The standards may be there, evoked and affirmed on a daily basis by every democracy-loving politician on the road to 2010. Noynoy, however, has no monopoly on it other than his name. He is The Scion: the heir to the legacy of his parents, the Once and Future King who did not lift Excalibur from the rock, but was privy to it because of his name.
Every critic of Noynoy Aquino is right to say that he is the circumstantial candidate. Without the stellar background of his rivals in his field, he banks on the memory of his parents and his pedigree, without swaying the skeptics of who he is, and what he can bring to the table. Yet every supporter of Noynoy Aquino is right in saying that he is the preferred candidate: that he may not sully and disgrace the name of his parents is reason enough to vote for him, than the others who can do so freely without regard to pedigree.
