I am one of the fortunate who get informed, via Twitter, whenever the intrepid Ms. Beth Angsioco has a new article out. For those of you who don’t know it – and if you don’t, I seriously worry about you – Ms. Angsioco is an articulate advocate of worthwhile causes who writes a regular OpEd column for the Manila Standard Today.
Recently, she tweeted that she had a new article out – Caveat – in which she remarks upon the seemingly diminishing number of family names in Congress, and reminds her readers that they are just as responsible for that phenomenon as the politicians are.
She writes:
Lawmakers are elected. Voters choose who to put in these positions. The decision to NOT put Congress under the control of just a few families and stars is in our hands.
It is unthinkable that of the more than 92 million Filipinos, we only rely on a handful of clans and personalities to perform the very important responsibility of lawmaking. Surely, there are more out there who can do the job at par, if not better.
And then she reminds her readers not to be “awed by family names or blinded by the sparkle of stars;” that voters should instead be more rigorous in their examination of the candidates to determine whether they should be voted for or not.
She’s right, of course. Voters should be more discerning when picking the people who will be crafting the rules that will bind them. Fair warning, indeed.
Instead of being awed by family names or blinded by the sparkle of stars, we must look into the track records of candidates. Subject them to a rigorous criteria. Look into their backgrounds. Have they been implicated in any significant political scandal? What have they accomplished? How do they stand on issues important to us? What is their legislative agenda? These are but some of the questions voters should answer before going for or against any candidate.
I daresay no one in his right mind would disagree with Ms. Angsioco’s concerns, nor her conclusions. It is certainly very important for voters to know if the candidate has been embroiled in a political scandal; if they’ve done anything worthwhile; and what their stands on various issues are. But I have to wonder, don’t most voters already know that?
In an arena where mud-slinging is officially frowned upon but happens anyway, aren’t voters already given all this information on a silver platter? And in the era of social media, where the slightest hint of wrong-doing can spark a wild-fire of condemnation and righteous outrage that is then repeatedly reported on mass media, aren’t voters already forced to face the dark sides of the candidates?
And yet, time and again, the same names and faces show up in the winner’s circle. And so, I have come to believe that the problem is not just that people are uninformed, but that the information being made available doesn’t necessarily move them to make the kinds of choices that others might deem “right.”
This is the inherent weakness of the “vote wisely” argument: There is no reliable, much less uniform, standard for wisdom. Ultimately, voters will vote on the basis of what they think will be the best course of action for them, taking into consideration their built-in biases like brand-loyalty [family names are brands after all], religious belief, or perhaps even a touch of anti-intellectualism [you know the type: people who say they don’t trust smart and experienced politicians because ‘look what happened with Gloria’]. And of course, there are those who simply don’t care, see voting as a chore or, in the worst cases, a commodity to be sold. One thing is certain though: no one casts a vote they cannot rationalize somehow.
Hopefully, Ms. Angsioco’s caveat will penetrate deep enough to get people to start questioning these rationalizations of theirs. Otherwise, I worry that the warning falls, not on deaf ears, but on disinterested ones.
