--Morgan Wootten
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- We see a lot of old and familiar faces gunning again for various positions in the May 2019 Philippine elections both in the local and national levels.
Some of them have now, at last, found major political parties to lean on when push comes to shove.
Without a decent or organized and recognized political party, any candidate in the Philippine elections will find himself shooting for the moon with his fingers.
Many of these names to be included in the official ballots of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) still don’t ring a bell for the hoi polloi even if they ran unsuccessfully at least four times in a row in the past elections.
And they are running anew; they aren’t losing hope.
Some of them behave and think like Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s squire, who endlessly tilts at the imaginary windmills.
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We know some past losing candidates who have been spurned by their families that are against their continued hallucinations for a political lucky break.
Family insurrections erupt and marriages breaking up because "hard-headed" perennial losers in the clans refuse to call it a day and insist on running in almost all the elections--past, present, future.
Family funds went awry; the cookie jar intended for the children’s education, food, shelter, among other important family priorities, has been dried up.
The logical argument put forward by these “uncooperative” families was that if they were unsuccessful in the their first three attempts even in the lower positions, their chances of hitting a jackpot in the succeeding elections in the major positions would be nil.
The families argue that instead of wasting precious money for the campaign funds, the perennial losers should save it for their future and their children’s future.
Money, after all, doesn’t grow on trees.
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We have the most expensive elections in the world for a third world country.
A candidate for municipal councilor in a smallest town, for instance, will have to spend at least P200,000; a candidate for city councilor, even in a component city, will need to throw away at least P500,000, win or lose.
A candidate for vice mayor in a small municipality must have at least P5 million for his campaign expenses; a candidate for municipal mayor must shell out P10 to P15 million, win or lose.
A candidate for city mayor will have to bankroll at least P100 to P150 million for his campaign kitties, including the payola for corrupt village officials; a candidate for congressman must secure at least P300 million to tackle the election expenses in his district, win or lose.
The amount does not include moolas for vote buying (let’s not be hypocrites).
Not to mention expenses to be incurred by senatorial candidates which we all know could breach the P500 million mark in today’s “standard.”
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Life is extremely hard nowadays in the Philippines, which is being battered by an unprecedented inflation rate.
If you are a candidate in the May 2019 elections and you feel that your chances are like a dream in the Boogie Wonderland, it’s better to withdraw from the race or stay away from politics.
There’s no substitute for frugality in times of economic doldrums.
If we save our money, we can move around confidently and stress-free.
We can walk straight and smile knowing that we won’t be a burden to our family.
If we waste our “hard-earned” money in politics with no hope of recovering it (unless we commit graft and corruption once we are in power) immediately, it is tantamount to violations of our own human rights-- the fundamental right to live with dignity and self preservation.
We lose our self respect and become anti-social if we throw away something we earned through honest-to-goodness means and hard work only because of our misplaced ambition that is far from reality.
