Just a little more than three months before the election and the real tragedy of the whole exercise is starting to emerge. While many are starting to see the vacuousness of the campaign of Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III and the folly of trying to provide logical rationales behind backing this candidate, the deep flaw of our approach to electing presidents wrought by the 1986 Constitution is starting to rear its ugly head.
We've always known that this system -- one where the President is elected directly by popular vote -- yields contests of winnability. This is a contest where candidates appeal to The Vote through name-recall and clever marketing. These two approaches alone when done well with the benefit of events that add emotional context to a candidate's pitch are highly effective on an electorate that suffers from a general lack of inclination to think.
Indeed, a commentor on Manuel L Quezon III's blog article Published Platforms aptly summarised the situation in a comment time stamped "Tue, 29th Dec 2009 12:51 pm":
The Philippine Presidential System has always been (and always will be) a contest of personalities and celebrities, and very rarely will ever be one which focuses on platforms and policies.
This sad reality, makes what is now unfolding as we go down the final homestretch to the May elections all the more tragic. As I mentioned earlier, the forces of free enquiry have been busy challenging cherished but woefully outdated notions of what an appealing President is and proposing what a true leader ought to be -- in short, doing what Filipinos seem to be culturally predisposed to shrink away from. This onslaught of intelligent inquiry, astute observations, and bold proposals has made surprising headway and some formerly staunch supporters of The Winnable One have began to reconsider and question even those noted "experts" on the matter whose quaint published views on the matter they once cheered on.
The tragedy has now become a function of the very system itself -- one where even a candidate with a minority vote can become President of our sad land. With four viable candidates in the running, the next President need only seize 26% of the vote. With just three, only 34% of the vote gets you that lucrative seat in Malacanang. Even under a two-candidate race, a just-across-the-line 51% win could be a precursor to divisive politics in challenging times and a drawn out who-cheated-who "debate" that is a favourite in a nation of sore losers.
Nowhere is this tragedy more evident in the sorts of thinking that otherwise intelligent pundits apply. I cite an excerpt from a comment made by becredentialled FilipinoVoices.com contributor Lila Shahani in a blog post of Abe Margallo's (one that is irrelevant to this article).
Why should we help the administration enemy (divided into Villar and Teodoro) by dividing our own house into Aquino-Erap-Perlas-Villanueva-Gordon? Unless we now consider all of these candidates to be our enemies? There is no reason why they can’t all work together in the next administration, the way Barack did with Hillary to his considerable advantage. At this point, it’s about voting for the lesser evil.
The above excerpt is a gem in the sense that it so succinctly captures both (a) the renowned loser mentality that grips the electorate and (b) the nature of the system that propagates and enhances this unsavory trait.
Voting for the "lesser evil".
It seems that the options presented by the Philppine "Opposition" election in and election out is a buffet of evils from which the Filipino is forever selecting the least from. It is quite telling how a nation of almost 100 million cannot seem to produce even just a handful of excellent candidate leaders of the sort that will turn our elections into ones where the voter selects the best of breed. Thus we are, in fact, a society that has doomed itself to selecting among lesser evils rather than from the best of breed. But this is not even the laughable point in all this. It turns out that this buffet of evils from which we select the least evil is, guess what, up against an even bigger evil! As such;
A good-versus-evil crusade.
As Ms Shahani mentioned in her comment, "Why should we help the administration enemy (divided into Villar and Teodoro) by dividing our own house into Aquino-Erap-Perlas-Villanueva-Gordon?". So let me get this straight. We are supposed to be selecting a lesser evil to ensure that the bigger evil doesn't triumph. Brilliant. Which leaves us with that all-too-familiar option;
Winnability.
All roads lead to it in a society imprisoned by culturally-ingrained attitudes (good-vs-evil), a flawed system (turning what would be losers in other systems into winners), and gutless unimaginative thought leaders (like Shahani above who rather than sticking to what she believes in succumbs to the morass). Shahani for one encourages everyone to "unite the opposition so we can beat GMA". Excuse me, but voters should vote for the candidate that they personally believe is the right one. The onus to "unite" is always on the opposition politicians and it is a bit of a stretch of already meager decencies to lob this responsibility onto the Filipino voter.
It is helpful to note that Lila Shahani is the daughter of a successful Filipino politician. She was born and bred within the system and is therefore a product of it. Thus it would not be a surprising revelation that her mind would be imprisoned by this little square Filipinos are wont to think within rather than boldly go out and explore the wealth of opportunities and possibilities that lie within different approaches.
With a bit more than three months to go, there is still the chance that intelligence will triumph over vacuity. That is the challenge for the 2010 Philippine Elections -- one where there is an unprecedented opportunity to leave the legacies of our past moronisms behind and look to a future that is guided by real, world-class, and ground-breaking thinking.
[Image credit: UtakNgTilapia.com]
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