At the war room in Makati City where vice presidential candidate Jejomar “Jojo” Binay was monitoring the election results, his picture was taped on a conspicuously positioned board, with a caption that says, “Ang dapat maging pangulo ng Pilipinas (The one who should be president of the Philippines).”

Binay was proclaimed vice president last week, but the idea captured by that caption had been discussed in coffee shops, informal gatherings, and small-group forums of political junkies long before the vote count was over.

The gist of the talks is how Binay is more experienced and smarter than the President he is supposed to just back up.

Here you have a president-elect, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, who was a non-performer in his 12 years as a lawmaker, and ran on a popularity borrowed from his well-loved mother (President Corazon Aquino) who had just died. He campaigned on the basis of attacking the outgoing President without presenting any specific plans and targets for his own administration.

Then here you have a vice president-elect, Binay, who, despite allegations of corruption in his 21-year stint as mayor, kept the poor of Makati happy with health and education services, and with consistently increasing income for the city.

While it is easy to assume that his running in tandem with former President Joseph Estrada and the endorsement by Senator Francis Escudero contributed to his popularity, Binay turned out to have started laying out his own machinery by helping vote-rich “sister” cities nationwide years earlier.

He didn’t have to have an elaborate campaign platform—he’s done it in Makati, he can do it for the entire country.

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