The thinker’s sacred duty

Churchill Aguilar

VICE President Jejomar Binay made a remark recently that the 2016 presidential elections is a battle only between Roxas and himself asserting that only they have the machinery to get the number of votes. It is a strong assertion implying that it’s not anybody’s game at all. And while they both may have trailed from SWS surveys recently, they are still very confident of their winning.

Such assertions sadly have their merits and it paints quite a horrible picture of Philippine politics. While the popular clamor all throughout the country are obviously Duterte and Poe, both candidates being symbols of change from a rotten system, the political machinery of Binay and Roxas can very well manipulate the result through their controlled votes in the LGUs they are handling.

How do they do that? They provide hefty incentives for straight voting. Adding more rewards, they promise great favors to their political party congressmen, governors and mayors who can deliver them their votes while at the same time fund their local leaders’ campaigns. The indebtedness of LGU politicians are so high they make sure this gets cascaded to barangay chairpersons who have direct hold of the voters and then whalah!.. their magic gets done.

Such very horrifying system of Philippine politics has been perpetuated by so-called brilliant local politicians whose interests are only personal gains. I mean if you are a politician who truly are after the welfare of every Filipino, then you would rather fight for every person’s fundamental right to vote freely and safeguard the sanctity of elections even if you may not agree whom we vote for, not manipulate us to voting your boss whose behind you have been kissing all your years as a politician.

What infuriates me more with Binay’s remark is that we are only left with the two worst choices–a man with a long list of corruption cases involving billions of government money and another one who is not a presidential material because he could not even handle a calamity well, much more a country. We have been experiencing this cruelty everyday at our breakfast table–the TV says there is bacon, pasta, toasted bread, longganisa, hotdogs and  brewed coffee, but most of our jobs will dictate that we should only eat bulad and tinapa because that’s what our salaries can afford. This goes without saying that the two candidates with machinery are the “bulad” and the “tinapa.”

Sadly again, majority of our voters especially in the hinterlands and rural places, are greatly controlled by such machinery. And while it paints a war already lost even before it started, I would like to challenge the more educated voters with relatively extra resources to spare–it is not enough that we know whom to vote, let us make it our obligation to convince others to rally with us. Such may involve us shelling out expenses such as tarps, leaflets, time and text loads but being the more educated and hopefully more enlightened citizens, it is our duty to empower other voters to have the confidence to vote for who they think should be serving us as a country in the next six years.

While the old Europeans call it “the white man’s burden,” I call it “the thinkers’ sacred duty.”

As for me, no better presidential candidate more capable than DU30!