Wrong mistake

Antonio J. Montalván II .

A SOCIAL media photo once went viral in Cagayan de Oro showing a vehicle clearly emblazoned with the name Zaldy Ocon. The vehicle was parked blocking a pedestrian access for the disabled. Accosted once by a traffic enforcer of the city that pays him taxpayers’ money for which being a lawbreaker is not part of his job description, he slapped the poor enforcer.

The signature campaign that followed the other recent viral footage of Ocon shouting a now popular expletive to former city mayor Reuben Canoy was anticipated to be the final chapter of a compendium of the city councilor’s public displays of vitriolic impropriety.

Organizers employed the public online platform Change.org which can be signed by any netizen from anywhere in the world. True enough, Cagay-anons in the United States posted photos in social media of signature sessions in one east coast locality.

Let us parse how the Change.org campaign statement was captured in its overture:

“The people of Cagayan de Oro City would like that the Kagayanons living abroad can participate in our online signature petition to oust Councilor Zaldy Ocon to be removed from City Council for violating the laws and a conduct unbecoming of a public official.”

Notice there are two reasons to entice the would-be signatory: violating the laws and a conduct unbecoming of a public official.

Take note as well that this was meant as a campaign, a popular movement designed to snowball into proportions of a social crusade catching fire. Did it achieve that purpose? Launched on June 12, by June 19 it had 2,443 signatories. Where’s the fire?

The first problem was vagueness. What laws were violated? The campaign is silent on that, which would have been the main essential in educating the signer because signers need persuasion. What was the conduct of Ocon that was unbecoming? It also fails to state what it was. The campaign conceptualizer had probably assumed that the VIP Hotel video had gone viral anyway, forgetting only a fraction of the population has the wherewithal to be in social media.

The substitute being asked was to “oust Ocon to be removed from (the) City Council.” Instead, this became its fundamental flaw. No signature campaign can remove an elected city councilor. It can demonize him in the public eye, but that would depend entirely on the campaign’s deftness in identifying with the public’s yearning at a given point in time.

The campaign had assumed that “conduct unbecoming of a public official” was a popular come-on. In a Change.org campaign, the platform invites signatories why they sign. The entries are fascinating reads for their misplaced understanding of what constitutes such unbecoming conduct.

The comments can be summed up in only two points. One, Ocon disrespected a “former city mayor.” Two, Ocon disrespected a former city mayor “who comes from a prominent family.” Sadly, the arrogance of parking along an access for Persons With Disabilities and slapping a traffic enforcer for doing his job – both of which are clear examples of having transgressed the law – effectively became lost in translation.

If at all, comments were practically zilch on the fact that Ocon disrespected an elderly on wheelchair. That would have been the powerful game changer. To be angry at Ocon for shouting at a former city mayor who comes from a prominent family translates to approval if Ocon shouts at one who never had public office and who does not come from a prominent family. It is downright deficient on the poor and the powerless who make up the majority and who would have fueled a mass frenzy for signatures at the Vicente de Lara Park.

Not incidentally as well, and aside from its nebulousness, nowhere in the campaign is manifested any proper scale of natural values that define what should be conduct NOT unbecoming of a public official.

Would the same signatories have the equal indignation to sign a statement to denounce an elected public official who admits to killing human life at the barrel of his own gun, admits that he once fingered the sleeping household help, tells his audience to push COA auditors down the stairs for flagging his own public expenses, and says to kill any priest or bishop we see? Many of these constitute transgression of existing laws.

Michel Foucault’s definition of fascism and the strategy to address it serves well to remind us in calling attention to abuse of public office. “The strategic adversary is fascism… the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that exploits us.” Had the Ocon campaign succeeded even on its demerits, we would have seen no end on the way society and those in power treat the poor and powerless.

Campaigns are aimed to shape good citizenship that empowers ordinary citizens to exact government accountability. This one failed for its double standards. By the way, Change.org has no way of knowing if you are a multiple signer, a robot, a person, an alien or a dog, unless the lobbyist verifies all e-mail addresses. So far, only the White House can do that. Change.org is just that – a symbolic change.

(Antonio J. Montalván II is a social anthropologist who describes himself as someone whose attention easily gets caught by issues of corruption in government, human rights abuses and indigenous peoples. He will write a column for this paper at least twice a month.)