Ang dapat pag-ukulan ng pansin  ngayon ay mga isyung malapit sa bituka – trabaho, suweldo, presyo, pagkain, krimen  – at hindi yung bagay na malayo pa – tulad ng 2016.

Di hamak na mas interesado ang mga tao kung saan sila makakabili ng murang manok na lulutuin kesa kung sino ang mamanukin ng mga partido sa 2016.

The government must remain focused on what must be done before 2016 and not on who can do best the things left undone after that year.

Early fixation on an election that is still 634 days away puts politics in the frontburner, dissipates our energy, distracts our attention, and marginalizes the real concerns of the people.

How to solve problems that burden the people must dominate the national conversation and not the chatter of the political class on who shall succeed the president.

We must restore our bearings.  The people don’t want us to talk loudly about succession. What they want is for us to work hard so that government programs meant for their benefit succeed.

Their concern is not on who will get that Malacanang job that will be vacant months from now, but on how to give work to the 12 million who’ve been unemployed for years.

‘Yan ang dapat i-push. Hindi ang kandidatura ng iilan.

If we want the nation to march to the same beat, our leaders must tone down the volume on topics about 2016 and in the meantime mute the Cha-cha music on changing political provisions of the Constitution.

This early, unofficial presidential primaries do not do anything good to us, except perhaps to create the spectacle of them throwing mud at each other, a show which can entertain the people but does not improve their lot.

Baka siguro mas mabuti cease-and-desist muna sa lahat ng maagang kampanya.

Ang kailangan siguro is a ceasefire of the political kind. There is a time for everything and a season for every activity. This is not the time for a scorched-earth political warfare in which the rules in combat are shelved aside.