Revving Up For The Campaign Trail

The national campaign has started and the streets have welcomed the event with campaign posters galore. The printers have been sending quotations to candidates to outbid the others and thanks to modern technology, printers have been able to accept orders through e-mail. Starting Feb 9 and up to May 8, national candidates and their campaigners may now encourage their supporters and volunteers to use media and informal communication systems and may now use explicitly “vote for,” and encourage the use, distribution, exchange of campaign paraphernalia or encourage all shows of support for candidate through all legal acts.

Since the Christmas break, I have visited many rural villages and the issue of poverty stares one in the eye. Candidates’ platforms are now being sharpened. It will be very handy if a candidate has the skills to analyze the issues and problems in one’s constituency and to interface such analyses with a proposed program of governance. One function of the state is to spur development through physical and social infrastructures like roads, irrigation, farmers’ subsidy and extension services, training & educational systems, etc. The cost of the governance bureaucracy takes up a lion’s share in the budget and so these are the items in the budget that need to be revisited and rationalized as to the fit between skills and function.

My sense is that candidates’ messages that address poverty will ring true with voters. Pundits are saying that voters will respond to messages that convey very clearly that it is possible for anyone to climb up the social mobility ladder. Therefore, core messages of candidates that outline how to climb up the social mobility ladder by improving our lives will be relevant. Experts are also saying that trustworthiness of a candidate will be relevant to the extent that a candidate will know what to do with such trustworthiness. In other words, the perception that one will do well with governance is important. This is to say, that invoking one’s pedigree is not everything. Invoking a long line of politicians in one’s pedigree can even be construed as promoting the very concept of dynasty that we are fighting against.

In Davao City and Davao provinces, organized groups will have solid votes. Many of these cause oriented groups have presented their proposed development agenda to candidates. These groups and their constituents will monitor compliance during the term of the elected official and they will judge a candidate through the ballot again in the next election. Which is why, it is very important for candidates to explain, for instance, that the function of the legislator is to make ordinance, appropriate budget, and preside over or perform oversight functions. As it is now, constituents go to their elected officials to ask for help for everything : from birth, baptismal, weddings to death events.

I imagine that candidates’ privacy will be invaded to the hilt. So, for the sanity of the candidate, it will be healthy to have an inviolate sacred space (whether virtual space or real space ) where one can retreat and replenish vital energy which is crucial for one to be able to survive towards the finish line.

But, as voters lets help in promoting vote buying free zones.