"Gusto kong mag lingkod sa bayan" and Other Campaign Schticks

With barely three years left in Noynoy Aquino's presidency, that is if he ever gets to finish his term, Filipino voters will troop to the polls and be enthralled once again by the spectacular campaign sorties of candidates vying for the highest office in the land. 

We await with bated breath for the customary patronage of artistas, for showers of manna in the form of novelty relief packs, caps, t-shirts, and candies that bear the names of sour-faced trapos, and for regurgitated promises that will never be fulfilled. We will be fed once more into propaganda machines and fall for political sloganeering hook, line and sinker.

Every election season, the hollow men and women of Philippine politics take center stage. With tired, worn-out catchphrases like, "Gusto kong mag lingkod sa bayan" and other dramatic pronouncements of patriotism, voters are swept off their feet. It's as if they are hearing such rhetorics for the first time. Nga-nga! Our votes are wasted on such mundane persuasions and sensationalism. Any Filipino with a sense of civic duty knows he doesn't have to be a politician to dispense care for the members of his community. Hence, servanthood is not the defining virtue that sets true leaders apart. We do not install politicians in power just because they want to serve their fellow countrymen. The bar for leadership is much higher than that, and rightfully so.

One would think that by now, having been hung out to dry all these years by corrupt politicians, Filipinos would, at the very least, be expert at spotting bullshit from a mile away. It is hard to believe we are that gullible. If our kind of credulity were a type of bacteria, we would be the holy grail of microbiology. But are we really gullible? I'd like to believe that's the least of our defects. What lies at the core of our misery is rather straightforward — we care about the wrong things: sentimentality, how we are perceived by others, warding off criticisms because we hurt too easily, keeping up with the Joneses, showbiz, overweening religiosity, and the grandiose display of gallantry that rakes in the illustrious pogi points. 

Politicians pander to our triviality. Why wouldn't they when it has ensured them time and again of their political survival and that of their kin? We generously applaud politicians gyrating with half-naked dancers, or expletive-laced speeches like that of Mar Roxas — and we exalt them as "totoong tao". Any self-respecting Filipino should be offended at such characterization. How did we become so cheap? When exactly was the last time we witnessed brilliant and impassioned debates among presidential candidates over issues that truly matter, such as economy, education, job-creation, agriculture, infrastructure policies, regional development, population management, healthcare, environmental sustainability, military modernization etc? We can't remember because either it has been a long time ago since we were presented with a solid platform of governance, or that these supposedly crucial issues have simply fallen more in the periphery than at the center of our consciousness. It seems we have forgotten it is our job to put our public servants to task and make them account for the confidence we confer upon them. So long as the candidates bring their horde of artistas to their campaign sorties, so long as they pique our emotions, we're good.

Not all Filipinos are indifferent, much less stupid. The fact of the matter, however, is those who truly care are vastly outnumbered. We can only hope for a silver lining: that the Aquino regime, for all the grief it has caused us, would turn in more enlightened voters in 2016.