For The Bohol Tribune
In This Our Journey
NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS
When election time comes around in our country, which is relatively more
often than in many other so-called democracies, I cannot help thinking about my
mother. From her I learned the primary reason to vote on election time, which
is to thank those who have done the family a favor. This to say that the reason
not to vote for someone is either the candidate has not done us a favor at all
or the person has refused in the past to grant a request for personal favor.
Such was the democratic exercise I knew when I was growing up in a
barangay in our home province, Quezon, where elections were in the days of my
youth and probably until today, an exercise to thank those who have done us
personal favors.
The other reasons cited for voting, such as a person’s fitness for a
position, outstanding leadership qualities, commitment to public service,
unrelenting devotion to pro-poor development and so on ad nauseam, seem to me in most cases an exercise in moral
camouflage, if not sheer hypocrisy. Or so it seems to me today on the eve of
our national elections considered by many as the most acrimonious in our
history.
I remember accompanying Inay in the early morning hours, posting with
sticky starch that served as glue, on mango trees that used to line both sides
of the highway, a poster with a picture of a person surnamed Bueno, who wanted
to be Senator. I asked my mother who was this smiling guy in coat and tie on
the poster. It turned out she had not met him personally.
She said we owed him a lot because he was helping the family process the
pension papers for my Grandfather, a World War II veteran. This was according
to the lawyer who directly dealt with this guy Bueno.
I do not think my mother knew about party platforms, a candidate’s
commitment or lack of it, to public service. She knew only one reason why we
were going through this ordeal of putting up posters; it was to thank the
candidate for his efforts to help the family.
I cannot recall if the guy won, probably not, because the surname does
not ring a bell now, decades after my Inay and I would surreptitiously walk
around in early dawn in our barangay putting up posters for his sake – a
gesture of gratitude from a family he was helping get a monthly pension for the
heroism of my maternal grandfather.
In later years, I would learn this from my Sociology classes, this sense
of gratitude, a prism to view behavioral attitudes and tendencies, is known as
“utang na loob” or debt of gratitude. At the level of the voter, I suspect this
behavioral trait is the key factor in motivating a person to vote for a
specific candidate.
People tend to vote largely based on personal relationships with the candidate
or, in most cases, with the person, a group or relatives recommending a
particular candidate. All other reasons are secondary.
Indeed the politics of gratitude will be a key factor in determining the
outcome of the election. It was so during my mother’s time as it is now during
the time of apparent sophistication, with computers and all, in our exercise of
the democratic right to vote. In the end, it’s patronage politics that will
subvert the democratic process meant supposedly for would-be political leaders
to present options for better governance.
It will be good to observe behavior of candidates and voters during
election time. From my vantage point, the campaign period which ends this
Sunday has presented quite interesting developments not seen in previous
election seasons.
The following will require in-depth analysis by political scientists,
sociologists and others interested in how democracy works in a context
requiring deep-seated structural and probably moral, reforms. I do not remember
seeing these in previous political seasons in our country’s history. I lie
awake at night thinking about these and their implications:
-The founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines on a video
conference (no way for me to know if
this video is fake or not) with a presidential candidate, who had met with an
armed group considered as rebels with full media coverage for the release of a
policeman who has been held hostage for months.
-A political party, known exponent of decentralization and local
autonomy, now chaired by the presidential candidate openly talking about
killing criminals without due process, abolishing Congress, declaring a
revolutionary government when elected; freeing some prominent prisoners from
political dynasties convicted of plunder and other serious crimes;
Note: This particular candidate’s rise to dominate the opinion polls
despite pronouncements that seem to be against traditional and democratic
values is itself a sociological phenomenon which needs in-depth analysis for
the lessons to be learned about modern society and governance.
Many people believe this overwhelming demonstration of support for him is due to widespread disillusionment about the
system and the perceived ineptness of the Government to control crimes and the
illegal drug trade. The popularity of the candidate across all sectors ma be considered
a protest vote against the system or the Government and partly a support to the
candidate’s intense and uncompromising stand on specific problems affecting the
people, such as the drug menace, crimes and peace and order problem;
-A major religious group endorsing a vice presidential candidate from a
family known for allegedly stealing billions from public funds and a regime that
it established and nurtured characterized by torture, imprisonment and
disappearance of hundreds of protesters mostly from among the young generation
and despite protests from campus groups, this candidate has been leading in the
pre-election surveys;
-A Presidential candidate becoming a shadow of her former brilliant and
articulate personality reduced to having memory lapses, stuttering and limping due
to poor health, instead of just
retiring to watch the unfolding political scene and dropping pick-up lines,
her current preoccupation, now and then to amuse the young and not-so-young or,
alternatively, to write memoirs about a colorful political career;
-A candidate, the most experienced among the aspirants, getting peeved but
poker-faced rather than worried, when asked regarding allegedly ill-gotten
wealth and his refusal to appear in the Senate to explain his side of the
story;
-A candidate with relatively limited experience in public governance,
supposed to be an Independent candidate, but winning voters for announcing policies about budgetary allocation
to projects all over the country which would require billions of pesos to
implement, and more importantly, a political machinery, which she may not have,
to back the reforms;
-A candidate with known credentials in public service and no record of
corruption but struggling to be heard and listened to due to lack of charisma and
flagrant inability to communicate effectively to a mixed audience of elites and
the vast majority of the discontented masses.
-The political left being marginalized and coopted by the prevailing
system which thrives on patronage by the elites who continue to control the
country’s political and economic life through the coercive power of the State
and laws which favor and protect their interests.
The “utang na loob” mentality continues to be entrenched as the cultural,
emotional and intellectual basis to perpetuate a system dominated by those who dispense
favors and privileges.
By next week, the results of the current elections will be known,
probably contested but accepted nonetheless because in this country, it’s too
expensive both in terms of time and moneyto file electoral protests. It’s the
same cycle all over again to perpetuate the same system in favor of the few
with most of us caught in petty quarrels and skirmishes to feed the mass media frenzy
and thus help preserve in the process, the illusion we call democracy.
Indeed it’s more fun in the Philippines – especially during election
time. For this reason and the obvious difficulty of choosing a suitable
candidate given the marketing hype and what seems to be outright lying by each
camp, I am having second thoughts on casting my vote on Monday.
We will continue to pray however and seek guidance on what to do when we
wake up on election day. ###
NMP/06
May 2016/12.07 p.m.
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