"Voters should elect more candidates like them in 2022."
"Voters should elect more candidates like them in 2022."
Many political analysts and social researchers have discussed this country’s voters as a mass of people who are intellectually lazy, undiscerning, wedded to the concepts of pakikisama and utang na loob and highly vulnerable to patronage and group pressure.
From time to time, though, Filipino voters have proven analysts and researchers wrong by displaying, in the voting booths, a capacity for discernment and good political judgment.
One of such instances was the 2019 midterm election, which elected members of the two chambers of Congress. That election saw the voters sending to the national legislature a handful of men and women who clearly were head and shoulders above the rest of the candidates for Congressional positions.
These men and women – mostly young – were intelligent, well-trained, professional achievers and possessed of personal track records of integrity, industry and social-mindedness.
One of them was Vico Sotto, the reform-minded Pasig City councillor who beat the candidate for mayor of the family that had long ruled the former capital of Rizal. Under the youthful new mayor the political environment of Pasig City has experienced a 180-degree turn.
Another promising new political face that the 2019 election produced was Juan Fidel Nograles, a political neophyte who succeeded in dislodging from the Congressional seat of Rizal’s most powerful political dynasties.
The story of Juan Fidel Nograles was highly gratifying and hope-filled. Mr. Nograles had no political experience whatsoever and no political machinery of any kind. Like Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who in 1940 had nothing to offer British countrymen but his “blood, sweat and tears,” Juan Fidel Nograles offered the 2019 voters of Rizal’s Second District nothing but his personal integrity, his excellent academic credentials – a bachelor’s degree from Ateneo Law School and a master’s degree from Harvard University Law School – his industriousness and a promise to give the Second District’s people that he would do everything he could do for their progress and well-being.
After coming home from Harvard, Mr. Nograles could have chosen to work for one of this country’s leading law firms; he chose to work for the people of the not-too-progressive Second District of Rizal.
Like Vico Sotto and the other youthful victors of the 2019 election, Representative Juan Fidel Nograles has brought measurable progress to his district. Two projects both on-going, deserve special mention. One is the Rizal-Bulacan Inter-Provincial Road, which, starting from the municipality of Montalban, will connect Rizal to Bulacan. Travel time to Baguio will be significantly shortened, as a result.
Rep. Nograles’s other stand-out project is the zoo-bed Northern Tagalog Regional Hospital, a level 2 hospital that will be run by the Department of Health. With its infectious diseases laboratory, the hospital will be the first of its kind in Calabarzon (Region 4-A). The R in Calabarzon stands for Rizal.
The 2022 general election is just around the corner. Hopefully, there will, in the coming election, be candidates of the quality and caliber of Juan Fidel Nograles and Vico Sotto. Hopefully also, the voters in the May 2022 election will be able to identify such candidates and give them the opportunity to serve the nation and the Filipino people.