The local campaign season for the May 9 elections has shifted gear, just 45 days away to E-Day, when over 60 million voters troop to their polling precincts to shade their future terrorized by the pandemic.
A total 18,023 seats from Batanes in the north to Tawi Tawi in the south are on the political market, with the now official candidates vying for the votes in their respective communities—many of them their friends and relatives or members of their extended families.
Of the more than 18,000 seats available, 845 are running unopposed, which suggests they are virtually assured of a May 9 election victory.
This is where we encourage the voters to be discerning, given the close bonds—by affinity and consanguinity—on the local level, where sometimes the culture of friendship or debts of gratitude can be so overpowering that can blur the percipient appreciation of the candidates’ needed qualities and competence in public service.
We are not saying we should not vote for our relatives, for this is precisely antipathetic to the culture of the Filipinos, whatever economic class or educational rung one may be in.
But we need to be judicious, since many in the local level are relatives fighting for the same posts and they are as well the voters’ kin, and political thumbnails no longer make a persuasive argument.
This is a sad commentary in fact on the culture of politics in our multi-ethnic and closely knit country, not helped any by the manifest reluctance of some who feel they have in their blood and soul the voters’ investiture for them to be of public service or to continue the service their relatives have begun.
We do not quarrel with that perceived investment.
But there are others, similarly if not better qualified but do not have the sufficient wherewithal to run, who are left on the forgotten roadside.
Because running for a public office in this country has been for scores tied down to the peso sign—even for the lowest elective rung available.
And some are running for the fun and funds of it.
Let’s keep the sacrosanctity of the ballot, which reflects for years our unrecompensed aspirations as a nation.
