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The Trap of Trapo Politics and its Bait of Electoral Currencies
By Yashi & Han-san
The trapo wails through their personalized jingles, “it’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Comedic tarps are now being installed on the windowsill of makeshift houses, while a brazen parade is ongoing in the most impoverished cities.
With the elections around the corner, the trapo scattered their troops from every barangay, delivering speeches filled with trusty traps of band-aid solutions for the poverty-stricken voters. This only seems to surface whenever the campaign period is near, and it usually plays like this: the trapo sheds crocodile tears in front of the poor, even going as far as claiming, lumaki rin ako sa hirap.
This heart-wrenching narrative pulls the sheep into their trap of a promising solution to the plight of the poor, but the catch is, this will only be mobilized if they are voted for. Surprisingly, the normally regarded as unaware seems to know their part, as the sheep willingly walks into the trap for the small portion of food hanging inside of it. This alluring bait is generally representative of education, health, and government response, but in this patron-client orientation, these basic needs are used as an “electoral currency” or a means of transactional exchange of votes. Now, the predator and prey seem to be on equal grounds in this arrangement.
However, one question remains: Why are the Filipinos deprived of these basic needs in the first place? This enticing trap of band-aid solution seems to be just a small part of a complex trap known as poverty created and perpetuated by the very ones promising to get rid of it. This is the bigger trap most Filipinos continue to walk blindly into.
Costly education and epal tendencies
The penetrating faces of trapos. The government’s target of reducing poverty incidence by 2021 will not be hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In line with this, half of Filipino families consider themselves poor, making the poor comprise a huge part of Filipino voters. Consequently, they are targeted by trapos in their campaign scheme for the upcoming election.
Using education as leverage, the go-to tactic is to be seen everywhere every time. Bags and supplies, name it, the faces of trapos are printed on them. These self-serving candidates do not have pure intentions of helping, but they only aim to become the most generous candidate in the eyes of the eligible voters, the parents. Likewise, scholarship grants given to underprivileged students are treated as photo ops with their names boldly printed on medals and certificates. These trapos ensure their presence is cemented on the minds of voters, going as far as starting their unethical activities pre-campaign.
The start of the campaign period does not coincide with the opening of the school year, but luckily for trapos, this is not an issue. They just start promoting early because according to the Republic Act №9369, a person who files their certificate of candidacy shall only be considered as a candidate at the beginning of the campaign period. This voided Section 80 of the Omnibus Election Code, which prohibits any person from engaging in election campaigns except during the campaign period. This is an obvious loophole overused by trapos. They use this morally unfair activity to condition the minds of voters, and the only way to solve this is revising the law, but this remains neglected as politicians benefit from this discrepancy the same way they benefit from the laws that rob the poor of true free education such as the free tuition law and tax laws.
The free tuition law are not pro-poor enough when it mainly caters to the privileged classes. When the elites have more resources and easier access to tutors and review centers, the elites grab the limited slots rightfully for the poor. Additionally, the taxes used in providing the free tuition are mainly paid by the poor workers because of rich-biased tax laws. There is still a lot to improve in these laws that disadvantage the poor, but trapos are more focused on milking these gaps than reforming them.
With the sudden shift to the online classes, the paraphernalia used by trapos starts to change, too, but before voters pledge their loyalty in exchange for donated pens and mobile data, may they remember that these candidates perpetuate the system that makes them rely on these donations. But in the face of survival, it is understandable that beggars find it hard to be choosers.
Decentralized health system and prioritized urgencies
The cursory commitment of trapos. During elections, health becomes a key bargaining chip manipulated by politicians with significant control over health service delivery and by voters with little to no access to public health services. Most would consider these negotiations between patrons and clients an enduring characteristic of Philippine electoral politics, but they should, by all means, cease to be. Politicians manage to secure votes from the poor by providing them easy access to health facilities and services, with the whole process starting from over a year before the campaign period but rarely extending until the end of term.
This elusive privilege that affords people from less well-off families a chance to regain control of their health only appears during election season. Of course, in exchange for immediate assistance and, maybe, dreams of sustainable health programs, indigent voters make sure to offer electoral support to those candidates who seem to be actively engaged in their health issues and personal concerns. And without fail, this sense of fulfillment ends briefly. Once the show is over, the poor electorate goes home crestfallen by the aching reminder that they were shown nothing but a brittle façade.
On top of this, health can only be used as a currency in local elections. Local government units (LGUs) maintain direct control over health in their respective regions, and they are also the ones to run in elections, incentivized to appeal to their constituents to stay in power. Because of this, local incumbents are resolved to respond to health issues with band-aid solutions. They only craft high-impact responses up to a point that they no longer guarantee wide public support and a shot at reelection.
The quasi-decentralized character of the Philippine healthcare system certainly does not bode well under the country’s current electoral system. Given that our elections have not undergone any major institutional reform and instead relied on the occasional appearance of grassroots politicians with community-sensitive platforms, the Philippine health service delivery system stagnates inevitably. At the end of the day, health outcomes are independent of large health expenditures or the mass appointment of technocrats. No, the solution goes deeper than fixing a few rotten parts of the process. Figuring out one puzzle piece at a time becomes inefficient when electoral institutions themselves can be restructured at the system level to create better and durable health outcomes.
Reactive LGU response and incompetencies
The harsh negligence of trapos. Electoral strategies in the Philippines are also known to extend to how the LGUs respond in times of crises, including the well-timed construction of infrastructure designed to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters. The entry of severe typhoons in the country is almost always followed by politicians flooding evacuation centers, holding bags of relief goods with their names plastered on them while evacuees stand in lines, waiting for food and whatever necessity they could bring back. However, proper assistance remains scarce on the preventive side. With the nearing election season, any natural disaster is an opportunity for vying candidates to offer in-kind donations and assistance to communities, strengthening their claim to positions of power.
Clearly, such acts are not done out of charity. If anything, the severity of damages and number of casualties and disaster-hit communities are proof of negligence. If reparative projects have been actively pursued and allocated a portion of the budget, there would be no need to spend on relief operations. Even the COVID-19 response is not exempted by this lack of comprehensive planning.
The cash subsidy supposed to alleviate the impact of COVID-19 has become plagued by anomalies because the national government referenced an outdated database and allowed the LGUs to determine the beneficiaries. This miscalculation led to a selective list and unfair distribution of subsidies by politicking officials and civilians.
Following its footsteps, reports of politicians using the COVID-19 vaccination program for premature campaigning such as posting their tarpaulins at vaccination sites remain unprobed. Likewise, voters accessing the vaccines through connections under future candidates remain unchecked until the campaign period starts, an echo of the loophole of the Philippine election law permitted by these politicians.
However, there’s no wonder that many still vote for them. These traditional politicians know how to prioritize electoral gains and the best way to get them, according to the old-age playbook, is to maximize visibility even before the campaign period starts. This includes fast-tracking construction projects and building infrastructure that are not intended for the long term but would otherwise remind voters whose names should go on the ballot.
Trapos know exactly when and where to allocate public funds and this information is not, by any means, aligned to the needs of their constituents. Time has proved that their misplaced incentives put Filipino communities in peril and risk the lives of the poor, the very people who continue to rely on them to deliver.
The thing about the trap of trapo politics is that it does not need elaborate schemes or sleight-of-hand tricks to entice the poor. It only leeches off the twisty trap of poverty, a kind that is already as impenetrable as impenetrable would go. Once you’re held in, even a glimpse of freedom is precious. Once you’re offered a chance to secure education or health security, pledging votes to some trapo suddenly seems less revolting than it is life-saving.
To eradicate poverty means to provide every Filipino an opportunity to lead a better life. This requires policymakers to pursue high-sustainability programs, craft differentiated platforms, and provide support to the grassroots. It needs advocating for the reformation of the electoral system that further disadvantages the disadvantaged, whose lives mirror the consequences of bad governance. The trap of trapo politics is intricate, but it is not invincible. The Filipino can break free.
