Unless the poor...

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

The late feisty lawyer Haydee Yorac, when approached by distraught persons complaining about their mayor (newly elected or reelected, I don’t remember), stared down the complainants and, with characteristic brusqueness, said: “Bakit, ibinoto ko ba ang mayor nyo (Why, did I vote for your mayor)?”

                                                                                                                                                                       Inquirer photo

Ouch. The subtext of her acerbic quip was: You get what you deserve, now you complain? Oh, but don’t we miss her, this frizzy-haired former chair of the Commission on Elections whose fave invocation was “Fiat justitia ruat caelum (Let justice be done though the heavens fall)”?

Here are my postelection ruminations. With the midterm elections just over and the results out so fast, thanks to automation, grumbles can now be heard on why certain corrupt and undeserving candidates won, or how a perceived cad of a reelectionist could get a new mandate, or how babes in the woods came out victorious simply because they had money to burn.

Self-styled political analysts suddenly emerge from the woodwork with their good two cents, opinion makers hog the airwaves, cafés are abuzz with morning-after discussions. We all have something to say about the conduct of the elections, how TV campaign ads worked or didn’t work, the so-called Catholic vote (if there was or wasn’t), the mounds of trash from candidates, the wanton disregard for election rules, etc., etc.

But an oft-repeated refrain is: The masa kasi. The poor masses are blamed for not voting right, the poor whose votes were bought by candidates with immense power and wealth, the poor who owe the candidates debts of gratitude (utang na loob), the poor who, because of need, fear or ignorance voted wrong, the poor who voted not with their head but with their outstretched palm, the poor who are ignorant and who can see only as far as their next day’s meals.

Sadly, the teeming poor are always perceived as having voted for the wrong people. But are they entirely to blame for their poverty and ignorance? Are they entirely to blame for voting the way they do? And can you blame the unscrupulous candidates for exploiting the poor so that they can perpetuate themselves in power and beget more wealth because of their power? Ah, the poor must remain poor so that the powerful can remain in power.

In other words, the vote of the teeming poor cannot lift the teeming poor from their poverty. Unless…

It is generally hoped that the poor, by voting for the right candidates, by not selling their votes to corrupt candidates, will eventually have a better life ahead of them. But how can this happen when the vote-buyers can assure meals for tonight? How can the poor see a little farther when they have Vitamin A deficiency?

I presume here that vote-buyers will never do right by the poor people they have bought, that evil deeds will only beget evil. They cannot cheat now and do right later—that is, say that the end justifies the means. Unless the cheats later get thrown off their horses on the way to Damascus.

And so I do not agree with the advice that the poor should accept bribe money from a candidate but vote independently for the one who they think is the good one (hopefully not the briber). Even the late Jaime Cardinal Sin said something to that effect. I would say yes, but only if your life is under threat.

The act of accepting a bribe perpetuates a wrong and unacceptable practice, not only on the part of the receiver but on the part of the giver as well. A journalist who accepts a bribe and says he or she will donate the money to charity anyway is giving the impression that it is okay to consider journalists as commodities. Who is to know that you gave the grease money to charity? Only God and yourself. That is not enough. You have to proclaim from the rooftops that bribery is wrong.

So can the poor be economically emancipated through the sheer power of their own votes? I have my doubts. As long as there are candidates who will exploit the poor to gain votes and win, their poor constituents will remain poor.

Is this a chicken-or-egg situation? The poor vote for the right leaders and they get economic freedom. Or they get economic freedom first so that they can vote freely for the right leaders? I have a sinking feeling that it is the latter.

So whence comes the poor’s economic emancipation if it will not be through their own votes? Can they ever vote right? Should they always be blamed?

Thank God, bad eggs do not always win. And the teeming poor cannot always be bought wholesale. And there are other sectors in the electorate—upright, unselfish, well-motivated—that can spell the difference and tip the balance toward the side of the least and the last. The positive results may come slow, but hope springs as long as these can be sustained.

I now often hear about voter’s education being included early in the school curriculum, the way financial management or sexual health should be, before it is too late. Some will fall through the cracks; we’ve had leaders with impressive academic backgrounds who became rotten. But it is always good to invest in the young. Some of them will someday pleasantly stun us, all because a good seed had been planted in them.

Last year, when I went to Iloilo for our town fiesta and to accept an award, I noticed that the portraits of President Aquino in the municipal hall were missing and had been replaced with several of Vice President Jejomar Binay’s. And this is the bailiwick of Mr. Aquino’s ever loyal Sen. Franklin Drilon. Eeew.

Let me end by saying that I hope Mr. Aquino finds out that not all local leaders who won under Team PNoy are above reproach—and the sooner he realizes there are undesirables who do not tread the daang matuwid (straight and narrow path), the better.#