The mid-term synchronized national and local elections is scheduled on May 12, 2025 and as early as several months ago, various national and local political camps are now scampering and jockeying for the limited slots in the slates of different political parties. Alliances among political parties, influential politicians and their supporters are also being forged to boost their chances of dominating next year’s political exercise for them to pursue their political and personal interests.
In fact, online and face to face surveys are now also being initiated by amateur and professional tacticians to condition the minds of the electorate on who are the potential frontrunners in the elections once the interested politicians shall have filed their respective certificates of candidacy for their desired position from October 1-8, 2024. What is evident at this point is that there will be no substitution of candidates that will be allowed by the Commission on elections (Comelec) which means that the final list of candidates that will be made available after the deadline of filing will be permanent except in extraordinary circumstances that may transpire from the end of the filing to the election day.
Many political camps have way started their respective informal campaigns through various modes, mostly using government resources which is to the advantage of those incumbent national and local officials. In some instances, the remaining less than two and a half months prior to the filing of the certificates of candidacy is the recruitment of allies and supporters either through bullying, harassment, coercion among others just for them to ensure that negative publicities against their evil motives will be potentially neutralized, if not a grave mistake on their part.
Obviously, early politicking has escalated and will continue to proliferate as the schedule of the filing of COCs nears. Inevitably, surveys, either self-serving or scientific, are mushrooming to the extent that there are surveys that are geared towards uplifting the image of the sagging images of incumbent national and local officials.
Online surveys are prone to manipulation because of the availability of certain mechanisms that will surely advance the interest of the desired candidates of the owners of platforms. Incidentally, it will expose the identity of those who are supporting the promoted candidates that will allow other political quarters to re-calibrate their strategies to combat such survey results even if it is not actually conclusive and reliable. The very purpose of the early online surveys now proliferating in various social media platforms is to uplift the sagging image of their benefactors, condition the minds of the voters that disliked politicians are still the frontrunners and establish a trend that could actually negated by the results of the elections. If such situation transpires, it would be easy for the troll armies to conclude that there were anomalies in the conduct of the elections, especially that there will be a new system that will be utilized unlike the old one that had been mastered by most of the incumbents to their own advantage.
Voters were not born yesterday as what people always say when they hear politicians repeat their lies which contradicts the saying that lies repeated a thousand times becomes the truth. What people are wary about are those that embrace the saying, ‘silent water runs deep.’ The online surveys being administered by neophyte strategists could be likened to the saying that ‘empty tin cans make a lot of noise’ which to many is not actually adorable.
There are still numerous issues and concerns that have to be effectively and efficiently addressed by our leaders but it seems that they prefer to dwell on petty issues just to gain publicity obviously to advance their own personal and political interests.
People had already suffered tremendously from anti-poor programs, policies and initiatives being forcibly rammed on their throats by our self-righteous leaders in the guise of good governance, transparency and accountability, the conduct of public consultations on certain important projects is actually just for a show, according to observers, because attendees are being scolded and shouted upon if they air contrasting views and provide doable and realistic solutions to the problems instead of trying to privatize everything. Many people are now wondering if the government is pro-people because of their obviously contradicting decisions and actions on certain issues and concerns that are of public interest.
In the past, there were some politicians who have been claiming that they are not worried about their political career but what is important is the make the right decisions. Unfortunately, today, the same politicians are now worried of their political career that is why they try to employ bullying and harassment tactics to forcibly win the hearts of people and ensure their chances of prolonging their stay in their respective posts even if there is already distrust among the voters which is evident at this point. Now, early politicking is being employed to test the waters of the chances of winning by the incumbents while other quarters are silently doing their part to counter the obvious strategies of politicians who were already eaten up by the bureaucracy.
