“I AM A MACHIAVELLIAN”
-Ferdinand “Bongbong”Marcos Jr.
Written by: Bea Pilotin
I’ve read at least hundred tweets about Ferdinand Marcos Jr. calling himself a Machiavellian. A lot of people were applauding him from sheer impressiveness. There’s a complete bafflement at people that made their heads spin a bit more into confusion. Others were laughing at him as we’ve all heard the expression “Machiavellian” that denotes something evil. But one comment thread stood out to me. “He is not the President we need because he’s a Machiavellian. And he said that!”
It was really a stunning moment- the Deep Probe and of course, folks on the internet have a lot of opinions and hateful words or ill-behaviors that took place it was because they’ve got him all wrong. My hope for us is that we must recognize this word with its good side and don’t just demonize him without understanding what he meant at the end. If we want to understand what something is, it must be understood in terms of that end, which we can discover through careful study. It looks like people overlooked Machiavelli’s less obvious messages and its deeper insights into politics. Well, it is perhaps easier for others to understand what a Machiavellian is by googling and looking first at the words created by human beings. But Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. believed that Machiavellian has also a good side, and when he said he’s a Machiavellian, he meant its good side. It no longer shocks me that while I watch a highly intelligent man speaks the truth, I couldn’t help but tell myself there are still leaders who possess an ideal trait that is strongly compelled by love and respect. And it inspires a deep sense of awe in me.
He wants to strengthen his relationship with the people upon mutual respect, more than any other thing. We are living in phenomenal time and these days, it is paramount than ever to work together with others and to simply resolve things for the amelioration of the country, to influence others (please note that I am talking about influence per se, not manipulate, for there’s a vast difference between the two,) to empower them, to delegate authority, to have integrity and character as the scope, and to develop those around us in order to put long-term resilience and relevance at the heart of our society.
It was more than five hundred years after Machiavelli wrote “The Prince,” it looks that many of our today’s political leaders still behave a bit, at least in principle, not in the same personality or dark-side trait centered on cold manipulative and malicious behavior as some of the ones he described. Well, Niccolò's supposed political philosophy and his innovative intelligence in his book “The Prince” (bad side) isn’t actually the same with what Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. meant. Because Niccolò did write all means of violence or evil ways so that the character in his book would achieve his ends. He was unscrupulous, especially in politics. And while the word spread, his book began to be demonized as immoral, evil and wicked. But then again, he still wanted the betterment of the state and he prescribed these means for its survival and that’s the good side of it.
