Think #Halalan22 is still a long time away? It isn’t.

TLDR… >> The next National and Local Elections will be held on May 9, 2022. That isn’t a very long time away. Time to start preparing. >> We will be electing a new President and Vice-President, in addition to electing all other positions from Senator down to Municipal Councilor. If you consider the job descriptions of those positions, you wouldn’t leave the choice up to others to make. >> The 2022 National and Local Elections will be the first national elections we conduct under pandemic conditions, so campaigns will be severely limited. It’ll be tough getting details about the candidates if we rely only on mass media ads, so better start digging now. Election day 2022 is less than two years away. While that may seem to be a long way off, it really isn’t, especially when you consider that you – ideally – shouldn’t be deciding who to vote for on the day of elections itself. Following the pre-COVID19 calendar of election activities, candidates file their certificates of candidacy October the year before elections – October 2021 in this case, and that’s only a little over 13 months from today. Right away you see that your window for “I don’t have to care about this yet” has shrunk dramatically. Let’s make it worse.

Chief Executives

We will be electing a new President and a new Vice-President, which means the coming elections won’t be something you can just leave up to anyone else. You’re going to have to have your say, or else the next President may well be someone you wouldn’t trust to walk your dog, let alone decide things like:

• how the government responds to the needs of the people;
• the national economy;
• the country’s foreign policy;
• crisis management;
• law enforcement; and
• basically everything else that Congress can pass a law about – including whether you can keep that small online selling business of your going.

Hey, and let’s not forget that the President also has the power to influence the lawmakers about what laws to pass (See Sidebar). Oh, and because our elections are synchronized, this means that, on election day, you’re going to have to decide who gets to be your Mayor and Vice-Mayor too. And that means choosing who gets to decide:

• how easy it is to start a business where you live;
• how the cops are going to enforce the law, all the way down to your barangays;
• how easy it will be to access local government services; and
• yeah, basically everything else that can possibly affect your life.

Real talk – if you leave that up to someone else, you are going to kick yourself if the office goes to someone who, to your mind, isn’t fit to hold office. So spare yourself the pain and be part of the process from the git-go.

Lawmakers

Let’s not forget that you’re also going to vote for Senators, a Congressman, and Councilors at the provincial and city levels too. With the exception of 12 Senators who will have another three years in the Senate, ALL sitting lawmakers will be out of a job by June 30 2022, UNLESS you vote them back into office. Needless to say, you can kick them out too, if you voted for someone else to take their place. In other words, you get to pick the next batch of lawmakers. Unless, of course, like an idiot, you give up that right to vote, all the while whining ‘oh, what does it matter?’ or ranting about how ‘nothing ever changes.’ Newsflash: if no one voted to make change happen, then literally nothing WOULD change. Don’t underestimate lawmakers either. They’re the ones who decide what laws to pass, including: Oh and, because of how things are around here, remember also that law-makers – especially in Congress – have this thing called “public hearings in aid of legislation,” which basically means that a seat in Congress can very easily become a platform for more than just actually making laws. So with job descriptions like that, are you really going to wait until October next year to start deciding who you want in those positions? If you’re smart, you’re going to start thinking about these things now; not just 5-8 months before the elections.

The First COVIDian Elections

And as if things weren’t difficult enough, #Halalan22 will be the very first time we will be holding elections under pandemic conditions. While admittedly, there are those who hold out hope that everything will be fine by year’s end – I had a long conversation with a ‘skip-the-schoolyear’ advocate who was so sure that there would be a vaccine next year that he couldn’t even conceive of a scenario where there wasn’t – it isn’t too smart to premise all your planning on a best-case scenario. “Hope springs eternal,” my vaxophillic friend said, while indulging in what is clearly wishful thinking. So, if we figure that COVID will still be a massive presence in a year or so (hint: all the science says it will be), then you’ve got to accept that we won’t get to see as much of the candidates as we did in elections past, right? It’s a safe bet that many candidates will be relying on televisions spots and radio commercials to do the heavy lifting for their campaigns. Which is not good because TV spots and radio ads do not – repeat: DO NOT – tell you anything of real value about the candidate. At most, those ads will tell you what the candidate wants you, the voter, to remember – and that, my friend is rarely the same as what you actually need to know. To get to what you need to know, you need to start looking at the potential candidates now. Take the position of President. Last month, the name of a politician came out as a potential candidate and, to my knowledge, that hasn’t been disavowed yet. So, for planning purposes, it makes sense to assume that this politician will, in fact, run for office. Instead of just getting all frazzled that some exciting person might be competing, shouldn’t you start asking what the agenda will be? Shouldn’t you start to wonder what that Presidency would look like? How that person would exercise all that power? And don’t just focus on the national positions either. In many cases, the true power to affect our lives most directly, lies in local government. So, who’s your next mayor gonna be? You have to start asking these questions now, so that you also start digging for answers now. Look. You will be voting for 1 President, 1 VP, 12 Senators, 1 Party-List Rep, 1 Member of the House of Reps, 1 Mayor, 1 Vice Mayor, and (let’s say) about 8 councilors. That’s 26 different positions. On average, you might very well be looking at 5 candidates for President, 5 for VP, about 50 for Senator and at least 4 people competing for each of the other positions. So, just in broadstrokes, you will have to evaluate at least a hundred individual candidates. Assuming you only started thinking about these things after the filing of candidacies in October 2021, and keeping in mind that final lists are usually released around December, you will only have 5-8 months to look at all the hundred candidates asking for your vote. Which means that you will only have approximately 2 and a half days to completely evaluate each person – including Saturdays, Sundays, sick days and those days when you just can’t stomach the thought of politics. That simply isn’t enough time. Still think 2022 is a long way away? Didn’t think so. Start preparing now.