Many readers ask by explaining, “Hoy, Daily Laborer, you always have fun poking fun at the lawyers. Why not poke fun at the politicians, too?”
Well, to your request, Daily Laborer humbly submits. But on this score, Daily Laborer will also take a poke at the voting public. So there will be a balance of humor, as the pundits say.
For who was that guy who said:
“Gather the smiles the while you may,
Too soon, perhaps, will come a sorrow;
Set in a stock of sun today,
For it may rain tomorrow.”
So, here goes readers request. . .
Every time an election comes round the corner, many, if not, almost all Cordilleran highlanders and lowlanders wish for that universal politician to vote into office –even if it is a pipe dream or fantasy. A sort of head tripping for balloters.
Highlander and lowlander constituents pine for a sort of politician as shall we describe who stands forth as the exponent of truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
A sort of politician who truly represents voters – even those who won’t vote for him/her – away from the rigors of allegiance, free from entangling alliances, unfettered by wealth, driven by no fear and led by no favor.
Such sort of politician is a true representative of the people who could not be elected to office anywhere in the highlands or lowlands except inside of a book.
Such sort of politician is one ideal for whom highlanders or lowlanders demand for – but do not vote for. He/she is a dream politician whom voters will not permit to come true. He/she will always prevail – during campaign trials and election time – in their minds, but not in their morals.
He/she is a sort of politician who remains their very sentiment, their favorite, but not in their action of voting, their phantasy but not their fact.
He/she is a sort of politician who is no better or worse than his/her political rivals. He/she is a sort of politician who has less to conceal but so much to reveal.
He/she is a sort of politician the manner of man/woman he/she is, but when the polls are opened, they vote for another politician, instead.
Great, are the voters – who sometimes bite more than they could chew and who wish more than they can handle. For politics, many say, make very strange bedfellows. Hence, it isn’t wise to sleep too soundly, nor talk in your sleep.
For as we all know, we are a nation who love to elect into office strange bedfellows – like show business celebrities, warlords, singers, comedians, boxers and what have you?
The Philippines is known as a showbiz country. We treat beauty competitions as others would the games of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) series. Election campaigns are no different. Any would-be-politician who can carry along a celebrity during his/her campaign will surely have a full audience.
Aye! Talk about the “tie that binds” the melodramatic dimensions of Philippine politics to the celebrity factor. It is deeply entangled. And what do we get voting into office celebrities, boxers, warlords, comedians and the like?
Well, we are gifted with some sort of clever politicians who never take it for granted that the voting populace will not approve their stand unless it is a grandstand.
Grandstanding reminds the Daily Laborer of that time he heard the speech of one candidate running as a politician and how his speech totally confused the Daily Laborer that he went home more confused than ever.
Luckily, Daily Laborer was able to tape the long speech of the candidate using his news reporter’s handy tape recorder. Here are some of the parts of that speech which Daily Laborer edited and let me see if you are not also confused:
The candidate started by saying, “In Promoting my esoteric cogitations or articulating my superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, I beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let my conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compacted comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency and a concatenated consistency.”
“I eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, rabblement and asinine affectations. Let my extemporaneous and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and veracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast.”
“I sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity and vaniloquent vapidity. I shun double entendre, prurient jocosity and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent.”
Cripes, that candidate should have talked plainly, naturally and sensibly. But he used big words and his audience went away totally bewildered as to what he was saying.
During political campaign times, in such “automobile-ous” days, we Filipinos have the knack of putting the cart before the horse and may be excusable. And very few of us know any better.
You may have heard of your neighbors having gotten into a spat just because of political differences, the other supporting one politician while the other enamored with another political rival. Many times have you heard of voters getting into fistfights because of politics.
We have also heard and read of killings as a result of political differences.
These have happened in the provinces. Luckily for Baguio City and parts of Benguet, you have never heard of residents taking political campaigns and support into their heads, hearts and fists. They are the epitome of what is called “intelligent voters.”
Maybe, just maybe, for those voters in the provinces who fight tooth and nail supporting their political candidates, it may be hinted that variety is, indeed, the spice of life; it becomes natural for them not to follow sensible precedent.
Because if they follow sensible precedent, then where is the spice of life? Law and order may be the government law enforcement’s first edict, but for any die-hard political supporter, why drag in anything so dull as that?
Political campaigns being the age of novelty, surprise, thrill and excitement, and if there are such things now as horses and carts, a die-hard political supporter would much prefer on modern principles to see the cart drawing the horse.
And when the reckoning time – after all the political campaigns – which is election day comes, voters are thrilled, rising early to go to the polls.
They leave their homes ere the break of day and watch the shadows fleeing. And they are jubilant and gay, as any human being. They nibble a peck of rice and eggs, and humming blithesome ditty. And steer themselves towards the polls and the city.
The world seems very good to them, there’s naught that jars or jangles, in this highland or lowland regions of the free, with its sky of starry spangles.
But ere have they walked a parasang, a sorehead overtakes them, and with a sad and dark harangue, he grieves his soul and shakes them.
“The candidates, he says, “are on the blink. And after this election, we will know the pangs of want and many kinds of worry.” And the voters say to him,” Relax ka lang, just vote who you want,” and leave him in a hurry.
Philippine law assures our freedom to vote for anyone we prefer to sit in elective position. Ay, good readers, thus we now return to the law, for our laws are full of returns and we will present a compendium of laws. Like a blistering heat, it seems to show to us that the law is a great irritator, and only to be used in cases of necessity.
Law is law, law is law. And as such and so forth, and hereby and aforesaid, provided always, nevertheless, notwithstanding. The law is like the cultural “pattong” dance, leading people round and round till they get tired.
The law is like an archive of the criminal justice process; there are great many terrible cases in it. Laws are akin to physics that they take least of it, are best off. Law is like a gentle woman – very well to follow.
But Law is, unfortunately like a scolding wife, very bad for us when we don’t follow. Law is also like bad weather; all are glad when they get out of it. And law is like new fashion. People are bewitched to get into it and bemoan heaven’s sake it when they get entangled with the law.
