01 June 2010
The latest tally of the senatorial elections shows that Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla has garnered the all-time highest number of votes for senator. Also elected senator are fellow movie stars Sen. Jinggoy Estrada and Lito Lapid. Other screen personalities, including Revilla’s wife, Lani Mercado, also won in local elections. I’ve heard friends lament that by not voting for competent professionals among the senatorial and local candidates Filipinos don’t use their heads in their choice of leaders. That explains, they say, the state of the nation. We are going to the dogs because of that.
That kind of comment actually smacks of middle class arrogance that is based, strangely, on political naïveté. Educated middle class people tend to think that ordinary folks, the masa, are beneath them in understanding things. They also believe that all people ought to think and behave the way they do. But they don’t have any idea what politics is all about especially to the poor. Educated middle class people can live without politicians. They might even say that society would be better off without politicians. They could be right, but that does not make the masa wrong in judging the right candidates for them. For, after all, a woman with a doctorate in economics turned out to be the traditional politician without peer. And thanks to the masa votes in the last elections, Arroyo may not be able to maneuver herself to power again.
The truth is, people vote for candidates who are after their own image – for us educated middle class: those with degrees from universities and with flourishing professional careers; for business people: those who have shown success in the field of business; for the poor: those who identify with them in their struggles against all the oppressive powers of the world, real or imaginary. Among the poor, their real day-to-day struggles are projected on the silver screen where they see Joseph Estrada, Fernando Poe and Ramon Revilla fighting their fights against great odds. As always, their heroes win and their victory gives them hope that someday, some way, they too will prevail. And they have hope, too, that in their public life the screen heroes would be true to their commitment to the cause of the poor and powerless.
Perhaps, the people’s hopes are misplaced. For, most of these movies actually hide the real facts and distort the realities behind the people’s poverty and oppression. Although the stories depict the actual abuse and oppression of people by the powers of society, they fail to disclose the social and historical forces underlying social inequalities that victimize them. And, in the end the stories fail because the hero fades away in the sunset while the people have to wait for yet another tyrant to rise.
Elections will continue to fail the people for as long as the masa don’t find real means of fulfilling their aspirations. Because they don’t see real struggles for their emancipation, they will take the movies as substitute and movie actors as their liberators. This is really a judgment on the state of popular movements for change in Philippine society. If radical change remains a subject of debate among radical intellectuals or of prayers in churches but fails to inspire the masa, it won’t happen. If political groups committed to change remain isolated and cut-off from the day-to-day life of the people, they will continue to fail. One way or another, the project to change things in the life of the masa must be able to connect with their daily life and struggles and succeed in welding them into a great, formidable and unstoppable social force. When that happens elections would become a true weapon of the people to fight poverty and to build a just, peaceful and prosperous society.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Too Late to Panic
“Too Late to Panic”
As of yesterday, less than a week before election day, the Comelec was still testing the pcos machines. It failed. Comelec had to recall 76,000 compact flash (CF) cards that are in the heart of the counting machines. The automatic voting machines could not count correctly.
This is too late to panic. Panic is actually an emergency mechanism of the mind that serves to mobilize all of its psychic energy to meet an overwhelming emergency situation. In the case of May 10 election, should the pcos machines proved to be actually defective there is nothing, really nothing, that can be done to avert a disaster. In the usual colorful language of Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, it doesn’t serve anyone to inject fear if the plane is already about to crash.
This means that we just have to pretend that things are going to be all right when we go to the polling places to cast our votes. Let’s face the music when the worst of our fears are going to happen. So, I would say, “Don’t panic. Relax, go to your respective precincts and do your citizen’s duty to vote.”
In the meantime, that is, between today, Wednesday, and Monday next week let us continue to complete our choices of candidates. The choice of president is going to be very critical for the construction of a post-Arroyo era. That president will lead the nation either to a renewed confidence or deeper into despair. The new national leadership may inspire unity among the people or widen the fractures in Philippine society. In other words, we should not play with our options. We should not allow friendship or kinship or temporary benefits to color our judgment as to who should lead the country into the future. There’s too much at stake.
At the local level, the stakes are not that high. But should the new national leadership prove to be a disaster, an inept and corrupt local government would make our situation even worse. A creative and determined local leadership can actually use local resources to overcome a bad situation. Local governments at the municipal level can turn themselves into economic units generating employment and livelihood to the people and even become self-reliant. Negros Oriental, for example, has all that it takes to become a stable, self-reliant and prosperous area. But we need local officials who are truly devoted to the people’s well-being rather than obsessed with keeping power and family wealth.
05 May 2010
Well, it seems like too late in the day to be preaching this kind of message. By now, we have already allowed ourselves to be persuaded to vote one way or the other. Most likely you will vote for local officials from a very personal point of view. None of us, I believe, are imagining a political disaster in the immediate future as a result of a massive breakdown of the voting machines.
That may not happen, of course. But its likelihood is growing by the minute. Using Sen. Miriam Santiago’s analogy, the plane is fast losing altitude and is about to hit the ground. No need to panic but we should brace ourselves to an eventual crash. Take the necessary precautions and hope and pray that we would survive.
This is my last broadcast before election day. In the meantime, I’ll pretend to live normally, prepare my codigo and exercise my right as a citizen come May 10.
As of yesterday, less than a week before election day, the Comelec was still testing the pcos machines. It failed. Comelec had to recall 76,000 compact flash (CF) cards that are in the heart of the counting machines. The automatic voting machines could not count correctly.
This is too late to panic. Panic is actually an emergency mechanism of the mind that serves to mobilize all of its psychic energy to meet an overwhelming emergency situation. In the case of May 10 election, should the pcos machines proved to be actually defective there is nothing, really nothing, that can be done to avert a disaster. In the usual colorful language of Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, it doesn’t serve anyone to inject fear if the plane is already about to crash.
This means that we just have to pretend that things are going to be all right when we go to the polling places to cast our votes. Let’s face the music when the worst of our fears are going to happen. So, I would say, “Don’t panic. Relax, go to your respective precincts and do your citizen’s duty to vote.”
In the meantime, that is, between today, Wednesday, and Monday next week let us continue to complete our choices of candidates. The choice of president is going to be very critical for the construction of a post-Arroyo era. That president will lead the nation either to a renewed confidence or deeper into despair. The new national leadership may inspire unity among the people or widen the fractures in Philippine society. In other words, we should not play with our options. We should not allow friendship or kinship or temporary benefits to color our judgment as to who should lead the country into the future. There’s too much at stake.
At the local level, the stakes are not that high. But should the new national leadership prove to be a disaster, an inept and corrupt local government would make our situation even worse. A creative and determined local leadership can actually use local resources to overcome a bad situation. Local governments at the municipal level can turn themselves into economic units generating employment and livelihood to the people and even become self-reliant. Negros Oriental, for example, has all that it takes to become a stable, self-reliant and prosperous area. But we need local officials who are truly devoted to the people’s well-being rather than obsessed with keeping power and family wealth.
05 May 2010
Well, it seems like too late in the day to be preaching this kind of message. By now, we have already allowed ourselves to be persuaded to vote one way or the other. Most likely you will vote for local officials from a very personal point of view. None of us, I believe, are imagining a political disaster in the immediate future as a result of a massive breakdown of the voting machines.
That may not happen, of course. But its likelihood is growing by the minute. Using Sen. Miriam Santiago’s analogy, the plane is fast losing altitude and is about to hit the ground. No need to panic but we should brace ourselves to an eventual crash. Take the necessary precautions and hope and pray that we would survive.
This is my last broadcast before election day. In the meantime, I’ll pretend to live normally, prepare my codigo and exercise my right as a citizen come May 10.
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