A Rare Breed
The 2016 Philippine national election is still more than half a year away. The official filing of the certificates of candidacy has not even started. (But this should be qualified: In this country of travesty and tapestry, the day after the last election cycle is, unofficially, the start of the campaign period for the next.) Yet our news media is already bombarding the delicate Filipino mind with indecent political stories. Reports on candidates being goaded, and discouraged, to run are rife. Presumably, deals and promises, both decent and not-so-decent, even bordering on the obscene, are being made. But one politician is making the rounds with interesting promises: the sitting Vice President.
For the past few months, Vice President Jejomar Binay has been accused of scandalous levels of corruption, from having a hacienda tucked away in Batangas to owning expensive condominium units in Makati City only the super rich can afford. All these he was able to amass while he was still the mayor of the city, the premier business district of the country. Recently, the Office of the Ombudsman recommended the filing of charges against the esteemed Vice President and his subsequent impeachment for his alleged involvement in the construction of the astronomically priced Makati City Science High School building.
(If proven, this goes to show that indeed politics is a very lucrative business in this country. But, if unproven, this only demonstrates the quality of mind the lawyers of the government have.)
All this Binay of course denied. He claims that all these are politically motivated and meant to derail his plans of running for the presidency in 2016. Bleeding his heart out, he says that the elite of the country are out to prevent a man from the masses assume the presidency. They, according to him, do not want someone from the poor to lead the nation because it would be against the rich’s interests. And who better represents this elitist interest against him than his bitter rival Mar Roxas, the secretary of the Department of the Interior and Local Government, and the presumptive candidate of the Liberal Party of current President Benigno Aquino III. Binay suspects that Roxas and the president’s party are behind all this muckraking against him. This led, finally, to the resignation of the man from the official family of the President on June 2015.
Binay resigned for two reasons. One, by resigning from the Cabinet, he gives himself an opportunity to attack the administration, thereby giving him airtime in the media at a time when the only things being heard of him were bad news. He could not do this if he was still a part of the government without looking like a hypocrite. Two, it frees Binay from his Cabinet duties and allows him to go around the country and touch base with local officials who comprise his network of local executives that had propelled him to the vice presidency in 2010. By resigning at this time, this gives him extra months to campaign and present to the unsuspecting Filipinos his “Makati-style” leadership (read: dole-out politics). This politics of his is what’s endearing him to many.
Recently, another permutation of his politics has come out. Aside from birthday cakes, he now gives religious items with the letter “B” prominently etched on crosses. I don’t know how the high heavens will react to this, but many uttered vituperation that Satan himself hasn’t uttered. Even Church officials released as a statement calling on candidates to refrain from using religious artifacts to enhance their public image. In Bacolod City, he again reiterated his desire to replicate what he did in (to?) Makati in the whole country, even churning out promises ranging from false teeth to male diapers and even Viagra. This last item might endear him to men looking for miracles to enhance their virility, something many Filipinos are quite sensitive to and crazy about.
For many, this sounds ludicrous. These sorts of promises might not even be taken seriously in many self-respecting democracies in the world. In these countries, uttering these plans in the campaign trail is the signal to kiss your political life goodbye. But ours is anything but self-respecting. You need not look farther than the mayor of the city of Manila to understand what I mean. You have there a convicted plunderer leading the capital city of the country. Is there a more debasing reality than that?
However, for the majority of Filipinos, his promises are not inane. They are perfectly sane, in fact, especially in places where even the most basic of services are nonexistent. For a mother whose heart is wrenching whenever she sees her children writhing in pain, the promise of free health care is a matter of life or death. For a boy who studies by the light of street lamppost, the promise of free education is a matter of reaching his dreams or not. For a fisherman who can’t buy medicine for his dying mother, the promise is a matter of easing her suffering or letting her pass away in pain.
These promises also reflect a deeper reality of Philippine society and politics. We still seem to view politicians as individuals to whom we turn for basic services the government should provide. The more a politician gives, the better his services are, never mind whether he is really doing his job or not. For the majority of Filipinos, the help these politicians provide is the only way for them to feel the existence of the government. Having access to them is the only way for many to ease the grind that life makes them experience every single day. The more connections you have to a politician, the more manna from heaven you will receive.
If Binay’s politics have anything to tell us, it is the fact that we are still horrendously far from being politically mature as a society and as individuals. More than anything, its speak of how horribly the majority of Filipinos are still living, many of whom are wallowing in abject poverty and subhuman conditions.
This should highlight the need for us to do something about their condition and help many Filipinos understand this situation. We can start by telling them to beware of generous politicians because, nowadays, ungenerous crooks are a rare breed.
