Crumbs

IT is one of those big pre-election pitches that are as predictable as the sunrise but whose impact has been as vague and ambiguous as the boundaries that divide life and death.

On Sunday, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines extolled in a pastoral letter its faithful flock to do whatever they can to prevent cheating and fraud in the mid-term elections this May, where 17,000 positions are up for grabs, including half the seats in the Senate and all seats in the House of Representatives.

The bishops stressed that “many of our current political problems, which have hindered fuller economic development and social justice, especially for the poor, can be traced to unresolved questions concerning the conduct of past elections.”

“As a nation,” they warned, “we cannot afford yet another controversial electoral exercise that further aggravates social distrust and hopelessness.”

The bishops riled over two cases in particular: the “Hello, Garci” scandal that marred the 2004 presidential elections and set off an impeachment case against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo; and, the P728-million fertilizer fund scam

One archbishop suggests that the mid-term elections will serve as a referendum and provide closure to questions regarding Mrs. Arroyo’s leadership. If the President’s party wins, he argues, then she deserves to stay in office; if the opposition wins, then the people has rejected her.

We agree with the bishops that electoral fraud is a problem that needs to be taken cared of for our nation to really grow, not only economically and politically, but also spiritually.

The situation on the ground, however, isn’t as two-dimensional as the piece of paper a pastoral letter is written on or an archbishop’s simple logic.

Let’s face it. Cheating in this country pays, and it pays because it’s easy. It’s easy because when it comes to deciding what names to write on a ballot, the question ultimately is: What have you done for me lately?

Visit the Manila city council, and you’ll get a clearer picture of how politics is won and lost in this country. Councilors working the stands and the lounge – shaking hands, doling out loose change, approving requests for financial assistance – have a better chance of getting re-elected than those working the podium.

One alderman’s tactic has been to go around his district at night looking for a wake. He’s just following his instincts. He knows precisely that a P500 plucked from his own pocket and given to a grieving family will get him farther than any bombastic rhetoric about the cancer that is eating into the moral fiber of our society.

Crumbs rain down on the masses during an election year, and these crumbs often translate into votes.

Cheating feeds into the desperation that poverty breeds. When faced with a moral dilemma as to whether he should accept a P500 bill and vote a candidate he dislikes or walk away and vote according to his conscience, what do you think a jobless father of seven young children, one of whom is down with dengue in a local hospital, would do?

It’s easy to extol the masses with something like, “Let us regain our dignity.” But by God, be realistic. You can’t eat dignity. When the dilemma is between dying of hunger or selling out to get crumbs from an opportunistic politician, the choice is pretty obvious.

Are we being defeatists? No. We merely wish to point out that when we proselytize to the masses about doing the right thing, we need to be sure we fully grasp the gravity of the depravity and desperation they experience.

Forgiving and forgetting

YOU can feel it in the air: the mid-term elections. The crackdown on opposition bailiwicks, a continuous barrage of news releases about how life is so much better now, a parade of the government’s achievements in the war on terror, the dirt-digging and mudslinging.

On the ground, politicians are much kinder now, more charitable. Ask, and you shall receive. They are much-more approachable; they smile more often and they ditch the fancy suits, Rolex watches and blinding blings. The cordon sanitaires are lifted, the bodyguards melt away in the background, and our candidates seem to know each and everyone – especially the poor, sweat-soaked, hardly educated hoi polloi – like they were long-lost brothers. The baby-kissing, yes, that undying cliché of political barnstorming, is now a ubiquitous, eye-straining spectacle.

While an election year always brings out the best in our politicians, it, sadly, also lures out the worse in us, voters.

We are a very forgiving race, so much so that while they hang dictators and tyrants in Iraq, here we elect them to Congress and heap praises on their spawns. Small favors, especially from somebody important or famous, elate us no end and often cloud our good judgment. A mere visit to our humble home or a handshake from the town mayor or someone we see everyday on TV is sometimes enough to make us conclude that this person may have a good soul, after all, and deserves to be elected in office again. Never mind if this same person has, while in office, turned a deaf ear to our pleas for help when we were looking for jobs or with our sewer problems and who made us wait in long queues and for long hours just waiting for the signature of a curmudgeon of a minion of his.

Forgiving is a virtue, but forgiving without learning anything from the experience – to just forgive and forget – is a fault.

Remember that senator who danced while the nation burned in disgust over her and her allies’ attempts to railroad the impeachment trial of the sitting president? She has humbly asked for our forgiveness and is again taking a crack at a Senate seat. Should we forgive her? Of course. Should we put her back to the Senate? Of course not.

Let us not be fooled again.

After a long slump, the Philippine economy is once more on the rebound. Our peso is stronger against the dollar, so we can buy more with it. Money from all over is coming to our shores, perking up the stock market, giving local companies a boost and creating jobs. The government is finally saving enough to be able to trim its debs and pay for roads, bridges, power plants, irrigation facilities and other infrastructure the country needs to reel in more investments.

Some of the benefits of this recent economic spurt are slowly trickling down to us down the economic pyramid. Oil prices are down, our electric bills are lower and credit rates are falling.

Though thanks in some part to an economic slump in the United States that is again spreading American wealth to the rest of the world, our rebound won’t be possible without men who, despite the odds, are laying the foundation that is making it possible for the Philippines to partake of the prosperity now sweeping much of Asia. Men like Gary Teves, the guy at finance who has been adept at reining in spending and improving the government’s revenue even if, at times, it means pushing unpopular measures like the value-added tax. He doesn’t do what he does with as much fanfare as a Wowowee! episode, which is why he’s not topping any political surveys, but truth is, here’s a guy who really deserves a seat in the Senate.

So come May, when we again troop to our polling precincts, we pray that we are not going to write on our ballots the names of people who will again mess it all up for all of us. Not the ex-senator (who thankfully will finally get some time behind bars) who made the Philippines miss the economic boom of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s with his military adventurism. Not the mutineer (who thankfully is still in jail) with the messianic complex and who is so deeply in love with his self-worth. Not the homophobic actor whose real achievement is marrying one of the country’s most desirable women. Not the former vice president who can’t even think straight.

There are still a few good men out there, and it’s not difficult to spot them. All we have to do is look closer.