Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra has likened this year’s elections to the Bataan Death March in World War II.
“Come election day, the Filipino will again march to the polls unafraid and determined,” he said during his speech at Mt. Samat in Bataan on occasion of the Araw ng Kagitingan.
“They will do so in the tradition of the soldiers who, eighty years ago, marched in this province, unbowed neither by the threat nor by the certainty of great personal peril,” he pointed out.
The secretary explained “the need to elect a competent and forward-looking government become more crucial than it is now.”
“The pandemic has placed a tremendous strain on our economic capacity, while pressures from within and outside our borders continue to threaten our security and national sovereignty,” Guevarra cited.
“The difficult task of jumpstarting our economy to regain its momentum and of re-asserting our independence in a climate of insecurity, among others, will require tremendous foresight and exceptional leadership skills,” he added.
Guevarra admitted “the task of choosing our leaders who can meet this gigantic task is made more difficult by the emergence of fake news and the relative ease in which it is shared and distributed in social media and the virtual space.”
“At the same time, the perennial problems of guns, goons and gold make the manifestation of our people’s true and genuine electoral mandate harder and more complicated,” he also said.
Despite these, Guevarra reminded Filipinos that “suffrage is a duty.”
“Come May, we shall once again manifest our capacity to think beyond the self, to vote wisely and the discernment, and to protect each vote on which the future of this country and people so precariously depends,” he stated.
“Come May, we shall once again confirm how the imprint of heroism remains persistent in our national DNA,” he added.
