Campaigning for a President of the Philippines

Today’s election campaign is targeting to bring national candidates to as many major cities and towns. I have been involved in presidential campaigns in many ways : as a child during the 1965 Macapagal & Roxas campaign when my grandfather was a campaign manager, when I joined the 1998 Roco & Santiago national campaign as a close in aide and now as a team member in the Noy & Mar campaign. Over the weekend, Presidentiable Noynoy graced a local rally in the island city of Samal. The gym was so full to the brim notwithstanding that the notice was just a day earlier.

I have had chances of face to face encounters with Noynoy early on in the decade during Abanse ! Pinay meetings and his overnight transformation as a national leader is unmistakable. Noynoy is now oozing with a charism that feels like divinely ordained. It is a feeling that I associate with Presidents like Obama and Cory much like a feeling of déjà vu.

As the campaign for local candidates has not started, all speeches before the arrival of Noynoy in a Samal City gym was about his presidential platform. In my own pitch for Noynoy, I introduced his educational platform of transforming secondary education as a stepping stone to a possible livelihood option after graduation and I was much pleased when he actually talked about it as the centerpiece of his rally speech.

We have also been bringing the presidential campaign to barangay hall meetings and barangay fiestas. I am finding out that the national campaign is a chance to review our soul and character as a nation : how despite our industry as a people, we are so impoverished in so many ways. In this sense, it should not be difficult to campaign for a president who is running on the platform of WHY we are poor. In sociology, we say, we know who are poor, where they live and what they do but we seldom address the issue of why we are poor. Therefore, the issue of why we are poor needs to be communicated well. In this electronic age, we have become visual creatures. The connection of corruption to poverty must be visually communicated. Of course, having the wherewithal and funds for communication is another matter. But, we are much pleased that the Liberal Party will accept donations only on the condition that there are no strings attached to the campaign donations. Donations will be accepted only on the condition that the future sitting president will not be beholden to campaign contributors.

It has been written by a literary pundit that we should not pin all our hopes in this 2010 election that is mostly funded by the so called upper class strata of society and that real meaningful change if we go by historical evolution will take, at least, two decades. But then again, if we are in rock bottom, the only way is to go up. And which is why, a palpable ambiance for change is in the air and this election will hopefully crystallize this. So, if as they say change happens every two decades or so, 2010 will be a year for good change and evolution through the ballot, two and a half decades later after the 1986 people’s power under the baton of our beloved President Cory Aquino.