‘We turn a blind eye when someone we know in public office commits a grievous error, even a crime…’
TOMORROW is the last day for the filing of certificates of candidacy for the thousands of elective positions that are up for grabs come May 2025.
This early, we have been treated to a gallery of images of aspirants — from young ones and fresh faces to old names and just the old. There are the dreamed and idealists and there are the ex-cons; the refined and the uncouth; the educated and the less. Some can give you in five minutes a succinct reply to the question, “Why are you running?” and there are also those who even after being given one full day will not be able to fully explain why they are seeking public office.
Some are confident that all that matters is looks, and in many instances, they are right; but there are also those who take time to study and prepare for the office they seek to be elected to, and their constituents get rewarded in the process.
Amused as many of us are as we see this parade of names and faces — characters all — who have begun that three-year ritual of being nice to us voters and promising us the moon, I cannot escape the feeling that “unfit for democracy” is the label we all deserve. And when I say we I begin with us the voters and end with us the voters, with our political aspirants coming in between.
We lament the “rise” of political dynasties. But these political families can only offer themselves to us and it remains our choice as to whether to elect them or not. Unless they have a gun to our heads as we cast our votes, or have a way to steal our votes and change the outcome, by the time we enter the voting booth, ballot in hand, their fate as well as ours is precisely there — right in our hands.
If we lament the rise of political dynasties then we only prove that we the voters are unfit for democracy. Because under democracy it is we the voters who choose from the aspirants, and we are the voters who install and re-install those dynasties that we lament, time and time again.
We complain that some of our elected officials are ex-cons who have demonstrated a propensity to violate the law and try to get away with it if they can. Yet again, who put them there in the first place, and are still more than happy to send them back?
We are quick to bash political wannabes who cannot even explain clearly in whatever language they are comfortable with why they believe they will be a good public servant and what their platform of government is — and yet we do not mind giving them our vote.
We turn a blind eye when someone we know in public office commits a grievous error, even a crime — and yet we are quick to condemn those we do not know or do not like when it is they who are under scrutiny. Deep down, we cannot escape a trait singularly Filipinos — knowing that who you know is as valuable as gold. So who cares if who we know is a despicable person; he is in a position of power and inference, yes? And if he or she has been kind to us anyway, the opinion of others be damned.
We vote for the devil we know. For the best singer and dancer. For those who make us laugh. We vote for the son or daughter of those we voted for in the past. We vote for the good-looking — the handsome and the sexy. We even vote for those who can make us cry.
Are they fit for public office? For the position they aspire for? Do we ask how they will spend our public money and what they will spend it on? And how do they intend to raise the funds they need for the programs we need? As voters, we hardly ask ourselves these questions, when these are the questions that matter. But decade after decade after decade it’s not how we judge our candidates, it’s not how we decide who to vote for. It may have been that way in the distant past — but it is becoming less and less as we stumble into the future.
Unfit for democracy: that is us — the voting public.
