Get personal with candidate choices

It is crunch time. In a week, all good citizens must go out there and vote. Never mind the excruciating heat or the usual chaos in voting centers. We have to go out and vote or lose our right to complain about the quality of our government.

I think it was Plato who once observed that “those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.” So it was their problem too in those times. No one should think of himself as too smart to stoop down to get involved with politics.

Electing public officials is nothing less than giving them the right to make decisions that affects our lives. Sadly, many of us are dumb enough to think they are voting for Mr. and Miss Congeniality in a beauty contest instead. But imperfect as our democracy is today, it is still in our interest to try to make it work. It starts at the voting booth.

There is no easy or simple way for voting wisely even if we have the best of intentions. We are told to compare platforms and public performance records of candidates. But platforms aren’t worth the paper these are printed on. And public records or image can be enhanced, even manipulated these days by really good publicists.

Even those of us in the business of reporting the daily activities and foibles of politicians cannot claim a significant advantage over the common voter in wisely choosing candidates to vote. We may know their lives inside and out but daily interaction develops friendships that color our attitudes toward them.

I have covered politicians for over 40 years now, first as the youngest reporter covering Manila City Hall when Tony Villegas was mayor. I covered the pre-martial law Senate and House. I also covered the post-Edsa Senate and introduced the first ever live coverage of the Senate in session on SkyCable. I have seen our people elect total idiots as “clowncilors” and covering them in session is like watching “vodavil” in Clover minus the sexy dancers.

There was a time we had statesmen as senators. But we also had characters there who epitomized the best argument for birth control.

This is why after all those years of exposure to politicians I have concluded that the only way to really judge them is to get personal. You cannot fall in love with their public persona. Often, that is carefully designed and totally fake.

Politicians are packaged like Star Margarine… making consumers believe all that trans fat is good for you… pampatangkad! Of course we now should know better… about politicians and about margarine.

It is often worthwhile to forget what candidates say and instead check out what they do. In this era of Google and Fact Checkers, anything can be checked in an instant.

The ABS-CBN Halalan 2013 website and their Harapan series are good examples of available resources for conscientious voters to consult. Also extremely helpful is the website of UP for next week’s election. Check out  http://halalan.up.edu.ph/index.php/analysis/university-of-the-philippines-forum and get some thoughtful insights from the UP academics on the issues at stake.

But as I said, there is nothing like getting personal with the candidates. Chiz Escudero is wrong to say that his personal life should be separated from his professional life.

If it is true, as the parents of Heart Evangelista alleged, that Chiz shows up in their home drunk and is disrespectful to them, that personal quality of Chiz is of public concern. How can Chiz as a senator be respectful of a faceless citizenry if he can’t be respectful to his prospective in-laws?

The complaints of Heart’s parents about his lack of respect resonate. The few occasions I had the chance to see him up close, I thought he was arrogant, and someone who thinks he is better than the rest of mankind. In a word, mayabang.

I was all ready to like him because his late father was a friend and his mother is a friend of my sister. But unfortunately, Chiz is nowhere as friendly or as human as his late father who I highly respected.

Chiz can’t even seem to look at you straight while talking to you. Shifty eyes make you feel he is less than truthful. Too sleek. I would worry too if a daughter had him for a boy friend. He seems too full of himself.

In any case, once a person becomes a politician, he or she loses his or her privacy. Everything they say or do is in the public realm. Politicians cannot say, as the late Vice President Doy Laurel and former President Erap used to say that everything above the waist is of public concern and everything below is personal. The moral values of the candidate count.

A candidate must always be ready to face public questioning. As a communications professional, I can understand why the frontrunners who snubbed Harapan wanted to avoid a fumble that could jeopardize what appears to be sure victory based on the surveys. But that’s not fair to the voters.

Candidates afraid of public debates do not deserve our vote. It only means they are more interested to win the election rather than give the voters a fair chance to evaluate their worth in comparison to their rivals. This attitude is nothing less than putting personal interest over public good.

Those who declined to participate in Harapan include: Nancy Binay, Alan Peter Cayetano, Chiz Escudero, JV Ejercito, Jack Enrile, Gringo Honasan, Loren Legarda, Antonio Trillanes, Cynthia Villar, Tingting Cojuangco, Jamby Madrigal and Migz Zubiri.

To me, they are taking the people for granted. Unfortunately, many of them will likely win too, given the lack of maturity of our voters.

But I try not to be too disheartened. The findings of the recently launched social media tracking project of ABS CBN and IBM Philippines seem to provide hope that a generation of more thoughtful voters is starting to emerge.

The positive impact of this development may not be felt soon. But from the data we are able to mine from social media postings I get the feeling that future elections will be more exacting of candidates.

The thing is... voters should be more discerning and demanding now. The successor to P-Noy could well be either Chiz or Alan, and that’s why topping the list of 12 senators elected next week is so important to both. Vote for one or the other if you can live with the thought of either being in Malacañang in three years.

Indeed, I suspect that if Mar doesn’t run, Chiz may likely be P-Noy’s candidate in 2016. P-Noy and Chiz are good friends. I think Chiz junked Mar for Binay in 2010 to eliminate Mar as a rival in 2016. Chiz is likely thinking Binay is too old to run against a much younger Chiz. He has upped the ante by hooking up with Heart, an absolute vote getter.

We can only hope that a miracle will happen on election day and all voters would suddenly be enlightened and actually vote wisely. I hope folks realize that when they vote for Nancy and JV, they are voting to perpetuate the politics for which their fathers stand for.

On the other hand, they are voting for JPE and his martial law record when they vote for Jack. The persona of the son was shaped by the almost absolute power enjoyed by the father as Martial Law administrator during that dark era of our history.

As Filipinos, we all have a tough assignment next week. Let us not vote because we are Catholics or Iglesia or Ilocano or Cebuano or whatever subgroups we belong to. Let us also not vote on the basis of single issues like the RH Law.

Let us all vote as Filipinos seriously concerned about the future of our country. Let us vote as parents and grandparents who want to leave a better country to our children and grandchildren.

And other than just voting wisely, it is also our obligation to educate as many other voters as we can. A clean election is not enough. Well informed voters are necessary.

Next week, we either give lousy leaders three more years to cause us misery as usual or we deliver a message for change.

Let us make our message clear.

Politicians

Arturo Acosta sent this one. It is an attitude we ought to have on election day.

I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. ~ Charles de Gaulle

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco