"The political process does not end on Election Day. Young people need to stay involved in the process by continuing to pay attention to the conversation and holding their leaders accountable for the decisions they make."
--Patrick Murphy
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- LIKE many Ilonggos who have doggedly followed the political events in Iloilo City and Western Visayas for that matter for the past 30 years, we now have an inkling of events that will unfurl in the next three to four days or several hours before and after the May 13, 2019 elections.
We noticed that the styles and methods employed by most aspirants for public office while wooing the voters didn't have a paradigm shift; they still used the traditional and decrepit approaches, tottering to appeal to emotions.
They still pin their hopes on the strength of the much-abused "masa" or the hoi polloi; and in order to get their attention, most of them had to resort to a spellbinding and hyperbolical "I feel what you feel"; "I am one of you", "I know what's wrong with our society and I am here to help solve the poverty", blah blah blah.
The only difference was the entry of the social media. Numerous fake accounts have been expedited, many of them sardonically made their way to the mainstream, buttressing the spread of voluminous but rancid information mostly not to build but destroy the reputation of rival candidates.
Our crystal ball, which has shunned relying on implausible surveys, has started to flicker and its scientific forecast may give some prominent political personalities a hypertension, especially those who have no plan whatsoever--and probably acceptance--for possible defeat.
-o0o-
Meanwhile, in our many years of covering the Philippine elections as newsmen since democracy was restored in the 1986 EDSA Revolution, here are some of the damning realities that we have learned and discovered:
--we have one of the most expensive electoral exercises in the world; candidates and their political parties are forced or obliged to spend millions of pesos during the campaign period. These expenses include the budget for "blocktime" media programs (to promote the candidates' "good" image and their platform of government, and to destroy their rivals), "payola" or "retainers" for village officials and leaders, media personalities and cops; campaign materials, and, let's not be hypocrites, to buy votes;
--popularity alone isn't enough to win in any contested position;
--money--oodles upon oodles of it--remains to be the key factor, the major player, or the game changer in any neck and neck rivalry;
--some candidates still use hyperbole and empty promises in order to attract and tantalize a horde of followers during the campaign rallies; but, unfortunately, they can't convert the "huge" attendance into instant votes;
-- loyalty among partymates is a sham; only fools among the candidates in one political party believe that they will help pull each other up when push comes to shove, through thick and thin, from start to end. The truth is, weeks or days before the election day, some candidates already adopt a "kanya kanya" system or "mansig salbaranay na ta" (save your own ass and I'll save mine) system;
-- treachery occurs in the eleventh hour. There are horse-trading, changing and dropping, party line crossing and swapping, solo flight, Judas handshakes and kisses, devil's pact, and even cheating (the act of refusing to spend the party money intended for the poll watchers and leaders and for the "buying of votes", and keeping it surreptitiously so that when the candidate loses in the elections, his pocket "wins");
--some members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)--both the officials and their underlings--engage in political partisanship and allow their sworn duties and obligations to maintain peace and order and neutrality to be compromised by the glitter of money. Sacks of cash intended to buy votes slip through the checkpoints manned by corrupt men in uniform;
--Some teachers assigned to facilitate the elections and poll officials are in cahoots with candidates who willfully and intentionally cheat regardless of their standing in the surveys;
--some barangay leaders pocket the money set aside to buy votes. These leaders collect all the lists containing the names of all voting family members in exchange of P500 to P1,000 cash for each name on the list, but some families don't receive their money. There are cases when five members of one voting family promised with P500 each or P2,500 for the entire family, get only P200 each or P1,000 for the whole family. Even in vote-buying, fraud and cheating are rampant during the elections.
--"winning" candidates or those who have consistently topped the surveys who lose because they don't engage in the "dirty" vote-buying or they don't believe in the magnificence and power of money during the elections, are the first to make a noise the morning after that they are victims of a "massive fraud" and that they lost "because our opponent or opponents engaged in vote buying."
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)
Showing posts with label *PhilippineElections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label *PhilippineElections. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Friday, May 3, 2019
Our political hell is also Dante’s Inferno
“There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.”
--Herman Melville
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- Both veteran and neophyte politicians who will win in the May 13, 2019 Philippine elections are also candidates for Dante’s Inferno if they allow themselves to be swallowed by the prevailing system.
Hell is the state of the soul after death, but it is also the state of the world as seen by an exile whose experience has taught him no longer to trust the world’s values.
I’m referring to the would-be thieves and the thieves--those involved in multi-million scams like, among others, the Pavia housing lot for local politicians and the “pork barrel” plunder for national politicians like Bong Revilla, Jinggoy Estrada, Juan Ponce Enrile-- who are (again) excited to enrich themselves while in public office (many of them will try to recover their election campaign expenses once they are in power).
They think reelection or being elected into public office is enough for their trespasses or crimes to be forgotten and forgiven.
--Herman Melville
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- Both veteran and neophyte politicians who will win in the May 13, 2019 Philippine elections are also candidates for Dante’s Inferno if they allow themselves to be swallowed by the prevailing system.
Hell is the state of the soul after death, but it is also the state of the world as seen by an exile whose experience has taught him no longer to trust the world’s values.
I’m referring to the would-be thieves and the thieves--those involved in multi-million scams like, among others, the Pavia housing lot for local politicians and the “pork barrel” plunder for national politicians like Bong Revilla, Jinggoy Estrada, Juan Ponce Enrile-- who are (again) excited to enrich themselves while in public office (many of them will try to recover their election campaign expenses once they are in power).
They think reelection or being elected into public office is enough for their trespasses or crimes to be forgotten and forgiven.
-o0o-
Dante’s Inferno is a vision of the City of Man in the afterlife, which is why it contains no glimmer of forgiveness.
At the same time, it may also be thought of a radical representation of the world in which we live, stripped of all temporizing and all hope.
There is no sign of Christian forgiveness for thieves in Dante’s Inferno.
The dominant theme is not mercy but justice, dispensed with severity of the ancient law of retribution.
Every reader was amazed by Dante’s Inferno, by the frights, the obscenities, the filth and effluvia of a vision in which execration was often the central act of perception, and suffering the central spectacle of desire.
The sinners--the lustful, gluttonous, treacherous--are caught forever.
Politicians had remind themselves of that.
In the passage set in the Eight Circle, serpents surround and tear at thieves, who catch fire, burn, and are then reconstituted, like the phoenix. But when they are reborn out of their own ashes, they only suffer again.
-o0o-
In Robert Pinsky’s bilingual edition, The Inferno of Dante’s new verse translation, this was how the thieves are punished in Canto XXIV, 91-120:
Among this cruel and depressing swarm,
ran people who were naked, terrified,
with no hope of a hole or heliotrope.
Their hands were tied behind by serpents; these had thrust their head and tail right through the loins,
And then were knotted on the other side.
And--there!--a serpent sprang with force at one who stood upon our shore, transfixing him just where the neck and shoulders form a knot.
No o or i has ever been transcribed
So quickly as that soul caught fire and burned
and, as he fell, completely turned to ashes;
and when he lay, undone, upon the ground,
the dust of him collected by itself
and instantly returned to what it was:
just so, it is asserted by great sages,
that, when it reaches its five-hundredth year,
the phoenix dies and is reborn again;
lifelong it never feeds on grass or grain,
only on drops of incense or amomum;
its final winding sheets are nard and myrrh.
And just as he who falls, and knows not how--
by demon’s force that drags him to the ground
or by some other hindrance that binds man--
who, when he rises, stares about him, all
bewildered by the heavy anguish he
has suffered, sighing as he looks around;
so did this sinner stare when he arose.
Oh, how severe it is, the power of God
that, as its vengeance, showers down such blows!
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)
Dante’s Inferno is a vision of the City of Man in the afterlife, which is why it contains no glimmer of forgiveness.
At the same time, it may also be thought of a radical representation of the world in which we live, stripped of all temporizing and all hope.
There is no sign of Christian forgiveness for thieves in Dante’s Inferno.
The dominant theme is not mercy but justice, dispensed with severity of the ancient law of retribution.
Every reader was amazed by Dante’s Inferno, by the frights, the obscenities, the filth and effluvia of a vision in which execration was often the central act of perception, and suffering the central spectacle of desire.
The sinners--the lustful, gluttonous, treacherous--are caught forever.
Politicians had remind themselves of that.
In the passage set in the Eight Circle, serpents surround and tear at thieves, who catch fire, burn, and are then reconstituted, like the phoenix. But when they are reborn out of their own ashes, they only suffer again.
-o0o-
In Robert Pinsky’s bilingual edition, The Inferno of Dante’s new verse translation, this was how the thieves are punished in Canto XXIV, 91-120:
Among this cruel and depressing swarm,
ran people who were naked, terrified,
with no hope of a hole or heliotrope.
Their hands were tied behind by serpents; these had thrust their head and tail right through the loins,
And then were knotted on the other side.
And--there!--a serpent sprang with force at one who stood upon our shore, transfixing him just where the neck and shoulders form a knot.
No o or i has ever been transcribed
So quickly as that soul caught fire and burned
and, as he fell, completely turned to ashes;
and when he lay, undone, upon the ground,
the dust of him collected by itself
and instantly returned to what it was:
just so, it is asserted by great sages,
that, when it reaches its five-hundredth year,
the phoenix dies and is reborn again;
lifelong it never feeds on grass or grain,
only on drops of incense or amomum;
its final winding sheets are nard and myrrh.
And just as he who falls, and knows not how--
by demon’s force that drags him to the ground
or by some other hindrance that binds man--
who, when he rises, stares about him, all
bewildered by the heavy anguish he
has suffered, sighing as he looks around;
so did this sinner stare when he arose.
Oh, how severe it is, the power of God
that, as its vengeance, showers down such blows!
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)
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