The Official Profile of Benigno "Noynoy" Cojuangco Aquino III

I don’t have a crystal ball but at the rate things are going, I have a strong feeling that Noynoy Aquino is going to win the 2010 presidential elections. One only has to look at the trend of how most Filipinos have chosen their past presidents to conclude that a candidate just has to have a popular first or last name. In Noynoy’s case, his first, middle and last names all stand out. Filipinos, being suckers for word games have even scrambled “Noynoy” to come up with “Noypi”, as if we needed another term to further push our “Filipino pride” mentality to even greater imagined heights. I gotta hand it to his campaign team though. They really know how to work up Noynoy’s appeal to the mob. They need not even bother going overboard in their efforts because he already had his supporters at “hello”.

What do I know about Noynoy? Hmmm…I will never meet Noynoy in person, but with the amount of stuff that’s been written about him in recent months, I feel like I already know him thanks to both his supporters and detractors. Not bad for someone who captured hardly anyone’s attention before his mother’s death. Yet, it is so hard to distinguish what is real and what is fabricated out of all the chatter surrounding him.

If we are to believe the latest Pulse “survey”, he is undoubtedly the most popular candidate at the moment. And the battle to stomp down this popularity rages on. On one side of the ring is the group that burns with a passion to support Noynoy’s candidacy even if it kills them. Facing them off is the group with all the questions about his credibility, all of which are being totally ignored by the former group. It’s so obvious who is going to win this fight. The enormous number of men and women charging ahead with Noynoy without using a bit of brain to understand why they are doing so, is enough indication of what the most likely outcome of this election will be. It’s like Normandy all over again except this time, the troops are storming the beach for the wrong reasons. As they say in a war, it does not matter who is right or wrong, what matters is who is winning the war. But then soldiers are trained to follow orders without question. That’s not something we expect of voters.

Admittedly, I am writing about Noynoy because I want to jump into the bandwagon. I noticed that every time someone writes something about Noynoy, the article gets attacked from the front, back and centre and I’m in a fighting mood lately. I am obviously taking the side of reason and thought that a more scientific approach could ward off potential attackers, so what follows is what I hope will be seen as an alternate angle to the Noynoy “debate”.

Since we only hear about Noynoy but don’t hear a lot from the man himself, how I wish I could at least have access to his iPod! If I can find out what type of music he listens to, I could form a better idea of what type of person he is. Some research conducted last year by a certain Professor Adrian North of Heriot-Watt University led to the conclusion that musical taste and personality type are closely related. Professor North wrote: “If you know a person’s music preference you can tell what kind of person they are…” He suggested that classical music fans were shy, while heavy metal aficionados were gentle and at ease with themselves. Fans of dance music are outgoing but not gentle; and listeners of Indie music have low self-esteem, are creative but not hard-working. Furthermore, soul music lovers have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and are at ease.

So, if Noynoy dances to the tune of “I feel good” by James Brown, the country will be in good hands. But if he has “I shot the Sheriff” by Bob Marley or songs by indie artist Pete Doherty on his playlist, Filipinos better pack their bags and head for the nearest airport. I therefore strongly urge everyone who can’t be bothered to ask for his campaign platform, to at least dig up a bit of info on his taste in music — and get to know the man through that.

Imagine too if I could ask the late Cory or Ninoy about their son and gain a bit of insight on what he was like as a child — specifically considering that Noynoy is a middle child. Apparently, middle kids get less attention from their parents. I’d like to know if this was the case with Noynoy. There was a recent survey involving a thousand parents and a thousand middle children commissioned by www.thebabywebsite.com. A third of the parents who participated said their middle child was the naughtiest and had the easiest ride compared to the other siblings, mostly because they were under less scrutiny. Fast forward to today and we see Noynoy still having the easiest ride among all the candidates while enjoying the benefit of simply disregarding all the scrutiny coming his way. His supporters are so ferociously protective of him. There is something to be said about people who are so defensive. The result of the said survey on middle children also showed that half of the children interviewed claimed that they were less “mothered” than their siblings and were forced to learn things more quickly. “Four out of ten said they had to fight for attention, one in three felt there was no role for them in the family and more than a third said they were left alone to do their homework”.

It’s not hard to imagine how left out Noynoy would have been before and especially after his mom Cory was catapulted into the limelight. He could have easily suffered the middle child syndrome, always craving for attention. This could explain why he is enjoying all the attention he gets nowadays. As Michael Jackson would say, “It’s his turn to shine” and he’s not exactly acting like a wallflower. Who could blame him when everyone around him is pushing him to the dance floor?

Noynoy doesn’t even score brownie points when it comes to having a woman behind his “success”. For one, he doesn’t have a better half and, two, he can’t claim to be a success in his own right to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, not having a better half is not exactly grounds for disqualification from the race to the presidency but c’mon, “women may not be good at reading maps but when it comes to finding lost items, they beat men hands down” all the time. Scientists in the US had concluded that a brain region called the parietal lobe which governs spatial awareness is active in both sexes when looking at “beautiful” pictures. However, while neurons on both sides of woman’s brain are always stimulated, only those in the right hemisphere were activated in men. This means that since men use the left side of their brain less frequently, they are not as aware of the objects around them as women. This might explain why Noynoy is a bit dense when it comes to finding the draft of his platform.

He does score points at daydreaming though. Another study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that daydreaming might be a better way to solve problems than intense focusing. Scientists scanned the brains of people and the MRI scans showed that the “default network” deep inside a human brain is more active during daydreaming. Likewise, in a surprise finding, the scans also revealed an intense activity in the executive network, the outlying region of the brain which is associated with complex problem-solving. Noynoy must have read this report; hence explaining why his photos always show him daydreaming!

Even if the above info about daydreaming were true, there will hardly be any work done when a man who doesn’t have a wife and kids takes over Malacanang, because according to another poll, men are bigger gossips than women. There was a poll of 5000 people by global research company www.onepoll.com which says that the office is just like one big locker room when men are involved. It found that the office is the preferred gossip place for men and men are happiest talking to work colleagues with 58 percent admitting it made them feel “part of the gang”. Their favourite topics include rumors about office relationships, sex, and salaries. And with Noynoy having access to Kris’ friend Boy Abunda, it becomes more likely that tackling poverty will not be a priority in Malacanang if he wins.

In the looks department, I really don’t see his appeal. It’s good that he is not attempting to hide his thinning hairline with a comb over but he could use a new pair of glasses because what he is wearing kinda makes him look dorky, and yellow definitely highlights his paleness even more. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Personally I don’t care if someone doesn’t look like George Clooney. I would go for an intellectual anytime even if he looks like Shrek. I have been told that the brain is the sexiest organ of the human body. Nothing can pump up and get your juices flowing better than a good conversationalist. Now, I reallly don’t know if Noynoy’s got the gift of the gab because I hardly hear him talk. It’s always his supporters talking for him.

Even if we use the coolness barometer, he still fails. A consumer psychologist by the name of Adam Ferrier who studied the traits of cool people said that unfortunately, being self-aware about your level of coolness makes you uncool. How many times have we seen Noynoy wave the “L” sign as if it were the coolest thing on earth? A lot. Another factor in determining a person’s coolness is someone who defies convention. Noynoy in that regard, is not exactly a poster boy for the James Dean wannabe’s.

There you go ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately, knowing all of the above still gives us not the slightest clue as to how Noynoy intends to lead the Philippines to an economic recovery. It’s a shame we can’t use torture to get some kind of platform from the Noynoy camp. Oh well, I guess we’ll just all have to wait and see.

Epilogue:

The author does not consider Liberal Party’s “Social Contract with the Filipino People” as a complete platform.