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THE MESSAGE. BRINGING INTO FOCUS FILIPINO PRESENCE IN AUSTRALIA
www.kalatas.com.au | Volume 6 Number 1 | OCTOBER 2015
OPINION
HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE
Random thoughts on politics
T
is the season of politics. Everyone is speaking his or her mind on
issues, candidates and topics like governance, qualifications, citizenship, etc. It can get people
pretty primed to shout loudly and forcefully about their bets.
This is how it goes. Politicians announce or give strong hints that they will
be candidates. What happens next is people take notice and begin to like or dislike
them. People make their choices. What
is actually happening to many voters at
this stage is they get too excited and announce allegiance to their bets this early. The most rabid and fanatical fool themselves into believing that their chosen candidate is perfect, flawless and infallible.
Here are some thoughts about politics, candidates, voters, surveys, campaigning, etc. I have put them down mostly in nugget form so they are easier to digest. Here goes.
***
Have you heard of The Three Bears
Theory in choosing a candidate?
Do you recall the story of Goldilocks
entering the house of the three bears and
trying out the chairs, the porridge, and the bed?
Papa
bear’s chair was
too big, his porridge too hot, and
his bed too hard.
Mama bear’s was the
complete opposite.
But baby bears’ was “just
right.”
I like looking at the
candidates’ characters,
records and platforms
and see which of them
will seem to have the
right answers most of
the time. In general, I avoid extreme dis-
ADOBO
advantages, or vulnerabilities attached to
candidates. Some may be too corrupt, or
too impatient, or drastic, or too inexperienced.
***
Politicians are like fish. No fish can live
in pure water. But you can’t get the water too dirty either without paying a huge
price.
Is your candidate too compromised
morally? I, for one, will not vote for any
candidate who is tainted with corruption.
Because even if he/she does bring progress, I will curse every infrastructure he/she
builds knowing that some of the money
was pocketed while building it.
There is no perfect candidate. Every
one of them is human with faults. Some do
have more sins than others, though. Right
at the outset, we must be able to tell which
one we will not be wasting our time considering.
I will grant that no one is perfect, and
everyone is partially right. But I would
choose the candidate that I think is, or will
be, more right than others in most situations.
All politics is contextual. All politics is
local, as former US Speaker of the House
Tip
O’Neill once said. No politician exists in a vacuum.
They are always immersed
in local realities. They are always coming from a political or social situation or
a narrative. The candidate
we should choose is the one (in our opinion) who can best solve our problems and
can move us forward considering the entire context. He will not be faultless. But he
will be the most likely to deliver!
***
There are always ready, willing excited candidates who will run at the drop of a
hat. Then, there are the reluctant ones.
In my experience, the reluctant ones
are the truly deserving. More often than
not, the reluctance comes from a conscience that does not want to deliver less
than what is expected of them. They give
a lot of thought to whether they are qualified or not and how much they can do
once elected. They stay up late wondering
if they will be effective, and whether they
are being true to the call to serve. These
are the ones I like to support.
***
When we look at survey numbers,
we should see them not as static figures.
To know their implications, we should
ask whether the numbers are on the way
down or up. While Vice President Binay
seems formidable with a 30-plus approval
rating, it’s quite a step down from his previous 70-plus approval rating last year.
Political capital such as popularity is
not something you can put in the bank for
use someday. It must be used when it is
there, otherwise it may disappear. Perhaps
integrity is the only political capital that
does not lose value.
***
Every presidential candidate must
somehow be able to connect to the electorate in an intimate way. And how much
more intimate can they be than as a member of the family? Looking at the candidates in the running now, I ask myself,
what family connection narratives does
each one present?
Ferdinand and Imelda for a while projected themselves as our “Ama at Ina ng
Bayan” (father and mother of the people)
until we decided we’d rather be a nation
of orphans.
Tita Cory was our favorite auntie, the
tita who cared for us and did her best
when we lost our parents. She could be
trusted with the family fortune.
FVR was some sort of distant uncle
who would send us money for our needs.
We were not too warm to him. We never
really knew much about him but he was
“all right.”
Erap tried to be the “Ama ng bayan,”
but he was the wayward father who was a
drunk and a womanizer. He eventually had
to be sent away.
Enter Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. She
did not want to be a ca