“Hope,…. is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed….. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
– Vaclav Havel
On election day of 2010, I woke up to people running in the streets. Dazed from sleep, I feared the worst like it was an emergency such as a fire or a vehicular accident. But no, the story we got was that a candidate himself was distributing money openly to a crowd of voters catching their breath to fall in line. The distance towards witnesses making affidavits for these transgressions is very, very far. Well, I thought this is less heinous ( but violatively heinous, nonetheless) from an experience as a child when an uncle lay lifeless on the street murdered by our political opponent. It was a long and drawn out murder case and lasted almost a decade in our courts. In hindsight, after years of introspective healing, this is the reason why it is taking me half a century to enter local politics.
The texture of the local races has been the same since time immemorial that one hopes and dreams to change it at some point in time. It is so deceptively simple and defies many a formula for change. Perhaps, the constituents prefer constancy and stability and the status quo as opposed to something new. All things equal, poor people would prefer something familiar. People will vote for someone they have access to when they are sick or when they cannot pay school fees or when they cannot pay water and electric bills. All public officials are deemed source of largesse and no politician has a right to enter politics without the funding wherewithal of one’s own or from some rich patron/s who are sure to extract or take behest favors during the politician’s term of office. Still, election is a methodology of democracy and as for politics, Randy David says, "politics is a mechanism for forging consensus."
Each morning during the campaign period, I always wake up with people already lining up to see me to solicit funds to defray prescriptions for medicines, or because it fiesta time in their village or someone wants to ask money for transport or even to pay for water bills. Most often, I tell them that under election laws, I am allowed to spend only three pesos ( P3) per voter. Later, I delegated this explaining portion to a campaign aide. Mostly, as we have to be in the campaign track at the crack of dawn, I was simply not available to many voters visiting me because I was going to their homes. The poverty in the rural areas is unspeakable and during the campaign I was filled with hopes that good governance will make a difference in their onerous and difficult condition. It is a hurdle to understand that poor people want the instant calories now to survive- even for just a day or two during this election fiesta - and cannot wait for poverty reduction programs that will take time to come their way. The logic is that governance is the business of government anyway and promises of good governance are not edible now. Mostly, people believe that whoever is in the reins of government will abuse power. That we have all the laws and institutions to combat corruption cannot transcend this belief. And so, it behooves upon us to promote the mantra that “hope is the triumph over experience.”
Political dynasties are still here with us because scions of politicians born and bred in a political clan are socialized into the ways of good and bad politics and have more chances of survival. Not many an ordinary mortal can survive the ways of politics. Perfect examples of these mortals who cannot survive politics are those who cannot give up their intellectual freedom from the center of wealth and power.
In my campaign spiel, I intimated to voters that I am already living a very comfortable life, I have received my inheritance, done with school tuition duties as my daughter has finished college, visited the world and that I am ready to serve. I guess my listeners are kind to me as they can see that I am still some reluctant public servant wannabe who is not ready to give up my precious personal space and privacy. I am surviving the lessons of the May 10, 2010 elections. Something makes sense and I have carried this feeling in moving on.
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