We can hazard a better guess where the nation is headed in the balance of President Aquino’s term, if there is clarity and light in the alignment of political forces in the public arena.

Instead of clarity, however, there is a gaping void at the heart of our democracy today. To adopt the cadences of Anderson Cooper’s famous tweet at the height of the Yolanda disaster: “There is no party, there is no leader, and there is no program of the political opposition in the Philippines today.”