A hefty segment of politically-minded individuals in the population of Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) are busily preparing for something and that is: to enter into politics and experience how it tastes.
For barangay politics is wafting into the Philippine air.
These people are immersed completing their Certificates of Candidacy (COC) for punong barangay, Sangguniang kabataan, kagawad and member, Sangguniang Kabataan, these COCs to be later submitted before the Commission on Election (COMELEC) before the deadline.
COMELEC estimates over two million persons are expected to file their certificates of candidacy nationwide and 642,000 positions are up for filling.
In the Cordillera Administrative Region, there are 16 barangays considered by COMELEC as election hotspots. These are from Kalinga and Abra.
Now, these very promising people are off to new and very exciting careers. For politics, they say, is the gentle art of looking for troubles of others to load onto your own shoulders. And politics, too, make strange bedfellows.
And if you commit a mistake trying to solve the problem of others, well, you just blame it on that dang politics. Or, if you get lampooned for a controversial decision, you can just blame it on your political opponents or critics.
Or if you shortchange your constituents from developments and your promises, well, you have a last recourse and that is to deliver your grandstanding and long-winded speech of defending yourself, offering lame reasons, blaming somebody or someone but not yourself.
Daily Laborer still remembers a political science student of his who submitted an assignment about political speech. He submitted a speech that tore the class to laughter hearing it. And the Daily Laborer convincingly gave this student a high grade for his effort.
The student’s speech went this way, more or less the way Daily Laborer still remembers it:
“Fellow students and fellow sufferers! I have been honored with an invite to appear before you on your happy and suspicious occasion. Corresponding to your unanimous call, I now have the pleasure of addressing every one of you. And I am going to stick to the points and confluence whereby I am myself annihilated.”
“Now, fellow students and countrymen, when you, members as democrats, aristocrats, autocrats or any other rats will elect me as student president, we will take it as retrospective view of the present and the past and to show the wonderful progress of moral civilization, regardless that we are members of the family of rats.”
“How marvelous, I say, is the development of human faculties in this enlightened school. The rising generation grow like cucumbers in Benguet and flourish like onion leeks. Nothing upon earth can beat us for enterprise and going ahead.”
“Such is the state of improvement among us that it is not uncommon for many of us to finish education, get married, have children, get into business, government or private sector or politics. At this rate we will be going, the world won’t be big enough to hold all of us and we shall be in danger for want of elbow-room, unless an enterprising politician will come the way to declare and sweep away the surplus population.”
“I stand before you and gaze, yes, if I may say so, with distended eyeballs, as we look into the future for the sake of the gratitude of an ungrateful posterity and the light of philosophy that could not even offer a glimmer of hope. . .”
That is as much as the Daily Laborer can remember about the student’s speech. It was a long time ago.
Anyhow, see how exciting a political career is. For in politics, NEVAH, will you admit that you are wrong! But you can grandstand till the rivers run dry and the sun goes to sleep.
Politics being too serious a matter that it should be left only to politicians, Daily Laborer likes to egg on and champion promising people out there to enter politics right away, so they can go on promising the rest of their existence.
Now Daily Laborer, who holds this idea that politics is the gentle art of looking for trouble, wonders no end why people go look for trouble when in the first place, trouble usually, and always, finds us very easily.
Of course, those who will later win in this coming barangay election will later find out where their troubles will begin, foremost will be saving their skins from the corrosive acids from the mouths of toxic people who believe they should have not won, in the first place.
Daily Laborer remembers a friend who took a dip into the Philippine political maelstrom many years ago without first, so to speak, putting one foot forward to test the temperature of the water.
This friend became a candidate for barangay captain in one of the barangays in the Cordillera, thanks to some of his journalist-friends who egged on him to try his luck in politics and learn the art of, “If you cannot convince voters, confuse them.”
So how did this friend fare in the political exercise? Sorry to disappoint you, readers, but he lost.
However, for that friend, (Let us keep his name secret for the time being because he is mulling to run again this coming barangay election) his defeat – or victory — wasn’t as much an issue as the chance to observe firsthand how Filipinos practice democracy, of which elections are an integral part.
In the early campaign days, this friend revealed to Daily Laborer that all the candidates exuded monumental confidence, predicting a sure win over their respective opponents.
Never mind if the candidates belonged to the so-called “old politicos,” young Turks, independents, “Reds,” Rightists, “loyalists,” or just plain nuisance candidates.
They simply had to run, promising heaven and earth to voters, or vowing to improve the lot of the common tao. Whichever could attract the most listeners.
This friend found out he had to shell out his pocket money to run for office. To the newcomers or neophytes, moolah was the be-all and end-all of a political career. “If one has lots of moolah, barring unforeseen circumstances, like cheating and flying voters, chances are, you will win,” Daily Laborer remembered that friend as saying.
Issues on the other hand, appeared to be of no consequence with voters. He observed that local voters are often clannish, opted for candidates nearest to their hearts – and pocketbooks – and minded not if he/she had a past or could not differentiate a proviso from an ad hoc committee.
What this friend learned from the political sortie he joined was, political game in the Philippines was quite similar to other exercises elsewhere in the country. That there must be a political balancing act: a candidate must not lean too much to the Left – or to the Right for that matter – if such candidate must win votes.
Also, a candidate must also be in tangent with other groups. For example, this friend was a Catholic. But during his candidacy, he was not averse to attending a séance with a local faith healer. He had to do it, however his conscience bothered him, if he wanted to be voted.
But what bothered this friend that time was the element of danger in Philippine elections, that time he ran. In the case of this friend’s situation, he had to contend with the “unseen” presence of local subversives.
He had the impression that all the candidates walked a tightrope, so to speak, when they delivered speeches, or did house-to-house campaigns, or made pronouncements in the papers. They ensured that no mention was made about dissident activities, atrocities or terrorism on voters by “outsiders,” meaning those espousing a different ideology from that of democracy.
This friend related how one candidate spoke out of hand and before his speech was even ended, a burst of gunfire ended it for him.
And voting day did not end this friend’s problems. In the polling places themselves, one had to have “watchers” to see to it that the candidate was not short-changed in the counting. Otherwise no vote was counted in his favor.
During his candidacy, this friend spoke of the freedom voters felt in choosing their preferred candidates. There was a heavy turnout of voters. Anyway, despite the defeat, this friend said he might try again.
Not for those sleepless nights, those endless days of handshaking and grinning from ear to ear, those unending promises of jobs and business opportunities and chances of a better life.
“Then for what?” The Daily Laborer asked this friend that time.
And this friend answered: “Just for the heck of it!”
Which is, Daily Laborer believes, the reason often for many candidates vying for one elective position, in Philippine elections.