TODAY’S election surveys are a foretaste of the possible turnout of the 2019 midterm elections: the halls of the upper chamber of Congress is once again set to house more of the same—the crooked, the corrupt, the turncoat, and the cutthroat.
Filipinos brag about their high literacy, but that characteristic does not translate to voting intelligence. More and more, Filipinos vote according to base passion and prurient self-interest; they vote according to their primitive appetites and to what would appeal to their narcissistic drives. They have a sadomasochistic streak that’s why they elected Ferdinand Marcos, who had murdered Nalundasan, and endured him for two decades despite killing more political opponents, raping Philippine democracy, and bankrupting the economy. They want fantasy and show biz, and that’s why they voted an actor, philanderer, and a convicted plunderer in 1998, They asked for more of the same in 2016 when they voted a douche from Davao, a people’s murderer, and satrap of totalitarian China. Filipinos have high literacy but subterranean democratic quotient. Their political and moral intelligence is as abysmal, as Marcos’s. Estrada’s, and Duterte’s.
The Filipino electorate has shown that it can easily be swayed by charms and familiarity of names. But they are not to be solely blamed; the biggest blame should be pointed to government leaders and politicians who use the poor for their political gain. Those in power love the poor not because they genuinely do so but because they need their votes come election day.
In the final campaign stretch for the midterm polls, people have witnessed how far petty politicians’ ambition can get them for those who have the means. Take, for example, Christopher “Bong” Go, Duterte’s lapdog who has disguised himself under the title of “special assistant to the President.”
The man has refused to join any election forums or debates and has focused only on campaigning where his wits, if any, cannot be put to the test and where the sub-intelligent masses would take all of whatever comes out of his mouth, hook, line and sinker. He has clearly denied himself to be subjected to scrutiny of the people and solely relies on those who blindly follow the President to elect him. Declaring his availabity for people’s service and allegiance to democracy. he has not subjected himself to any democratic forum, thus showing himself to be the enemy of the democracy he forswears to serve. When it comes to democratic debates, this Bong is no Go.
But it is not only Go but the whole Senate slate of the administration that is questionable. They are above all, anti-life and anti-poor, for they agree with the policy of Duterte to summarily execute people suffering from addiction, and subject the people to higher taxes through the Train Law.
In the senatorial debate held in UST last April 27, JV Ejercito claimed that the Senate is the “last bastion of democracy.” But the chamber’s decisions will show that the people could and should not put their faith in them anymore.
At a crucial time where Beijing is violating Manila’s territorial waters, what the country needs are lawmakers who will stand up and assert our rights to our own territory, not to kowtow to Duterte’s cowardly, treasonous accommodation of every aggressive move by Communist China in the West Philippine Sea. Moreover as extra-judicial killings continue to increase and amid Duterte’s shameless self-serving decision to take the Philippines out of the International Criminal Court, the country is in need of lawmakers both in the House of Representatives and the Senate who will value life and who will fight for it courageously and intelligently.
‘Don’t leave God out’
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas has reminded the Catholic faithful not to “leave God when you vote” in the May 13 polls. “The winners in elections are mirrors of the values and aspirations, dreams, and hopes of the people who voted for them. It can also show our backward moving society,” he said.
This midterm polls, the Filipino electorate would do well to think and discern their vote well, for the result will be a referendum on Duterte and his government’s policies. To ignore the morally appropriate choice is to allow the culture of impunity and death to prevail in the country. It is to sell the country to totalitarian godless China. The Filipino’s vote this 2019 is indeed a matter of life and death.
