Arrested development

The twerking episode at a Liberal Party affair in Laguna that so scandalized the nation last week reminded me of a popular television series some 15 years ago or so. The show, entitled Arrested Development, is about a dysfunctional family whose members are so much like many of our politicians whose emotional and psychological development have been arrested or stopped at the level of ego-centric pubescent teens.

Arrested Development is the story of a once rich family who continue to lead an extravagant lifestyle and get themselves into so much trouble. Everyone in the family, from the padre de familia to the mother and children and their friends and in-laws, are all dysfunctional.

The one exception is a son, Michael, who tried so hard to do the right thing and keep his family together. But that got him into trouble with his family who didn’t appreciate his being sanely different.

Maybe, that’s our problem. We try so hard to be the adult in a country where the dysfunctional politicians reign. We end up being society’s frustrated reformers because everyone else enjoys their twerking.

Despite the denial of MMDA chairman Francis Tolentino that he brought the twerking girls to the Laguna gathering, pictures have been posted on Facebook showing the girls, supposedly from the same group, wearing Francis Tolentino t-shirts in a similar gathering.

It seems no one is more shocked about the turn of events than Tolentino himself. He thought he was just playing the game by what he understood were the rules. Politicians are expected to bring entertainment to the masses during the campaign season and sexy girls have always been part of the program.

Indeed, the Laguna congressman to whom Tolentino was supposed to have gifted the sexy girls was also surprised at the negative reaction. He didn’t see anything wrong with the girls dry humping pot-bellied men on the stage in various Kamasutra-like intercourse poses.

If COA is doing its job, they should check MMDA accounting records to see if taxpayers paid for the entertainment of Liberal Party politicians. As the Facebook posts last week seem to indicate, this was not the first time in recent memory that the MMDA chairman was associated with sexy dancing girls.

Indeed, COA should check suspicious provincial trips of MMDA officials over the past year. MMDA’s jurisdiction does not extend to provinces like Camarines Norte, Cebu, Quezon, Albay, etc that were visited by the chairman. Expenses incurred there should be disallowed.

That’s what’s wrong with our campaign season. The political rallies are excuses to have an instant town fiesta. Candidates or their paid entertainers sing and dance for the crowd of supporters. The intelligent voters know there is nothing to be gained in those rallies and stay away.

The only national politician I know who has made an effort to go against this electoral silliness is Sen. Serge Osmeña. Even if he is part of a ticket, Sen. Osmeña stays away from those rallies. Instead, he goes around the country by himself, proceeds to the top radio station in the area and discusses issues there for an hour or more.

Sen. Osmeña finds his campaign strategy more fulfilling because it enables him to communicate his ideas on issues that voters should find important. He is also able to spend scarce campaign funds more efficiently. But that’s because Sen. Osmeña is a serious politician who honestly wants to make a difference in the lives of people through his being a senator.

On the other hand, the MMDA chairman and that Laguna congressman are typical of the old style politicians we can live without. Public service seems furthest in their minds. We saw this when Tolentino abandoned us in a traffic gridlock during the INC rally by going to Albay to campaign. No sense of duty!

Such traditional politicians have no regard for decency in the conduct of their campaign. And as we saw, they didn’t mind demeaning women to catch voter attention.

In a way, these politicians suffer from arrested development. They have not outgrown their teenage drives for power and sex, materialism, selfishness, and can be very manipulative to get what they want.

That dysfunctional attitude may have been rewarded in the past, but in this social media age, it gets punished fast. As Tolentino saw, he instantly became a hate object in social media as netizens protested loudly this kind of uncouth behavior.

In the past, it was easy for politicians to muffle or ignore protests from society’s more decent sectors. But that’s no longer possible in the social media age where undesirable behavior gets cut down quickly. And that’s exactly what happened.

Actually, it is my hope that social media will force candidates to be truthful and to engage in real issues that people are interested in. Of course there are the paid trolls that politicians use, but by and large the netizen community had been able to galvanize a good response to an issue or an event.

Curiously, it is in the entertainment sector of traditional media where social media has been able to create waves significant enough to move the nation. That AlDub phenomenon is a good example. The female side of the pairing was discovered through You Tube. And the phenomenon got a big boost thereafter on Twitter.

It is not impossible for a political version of AlDub to happen and upset all those candidacies we know now. It may not be possible yet to elect a president largely through social media sentiment. But at the very least, candidates will have to make sure they do not attract a negative reaction on social media that could snowball into an electoral defeat.

For now, we have to make sure dysfunctional politicians with arrested development don’t win in the coming election. We have had enough of them and it is time we get the good guys elected in government.

Tax reform now

Marlon Pangan Mangalus, an engineer, had this to say on tax reform:

You Hit it Again Sir Boo!

I am an OFW in Singapore, usually our tax rate here is around 1-2 percent of gross income… or even lower.  My wife and I wanted to put-up a business back home and make it legal by registering it. But after learning how complex it is to register with DTI, LGU, BIR etc plus the cost and monthly or quarterly tax filing requirements, WTF…

Even for a business like a sari-sari store the requirements are so complicated… going underground (informal sector) will be better… I think we have too many lawyers in our government who formulate our tax system, or even the planning of infra… haist...

 Living in Metro Manila as a young family with a house and car  mortgage will require an income of P100,000 per month net… Even both for my wife and I, both registered chemical engineers, it is very remote we can find a company that can pay us what we require… plus the taxes and other payroll deductions.

If the services we get from our government is superb, like if we have public hospitals that can take care of us (we will not worry about getting sick), if we have public schools and universities that will enable our children to get good education, if we have good infra, if we have reliable police- security, and our frontline government services are efficient, we will be happy to pay our taxes, even if was at 50 percent… But currently even one percent or even P1 of tax is already too much to pay vs the services we get.

Dreams of democracy

Francisco J. Fernandez had this reaction to the column on our kind of democracy.

Dear Mr Chanco,

I always wondered why McArthur instituted after WW2 in Japan an honest to goodness land reform. Huge tracts of land were “taken” from daimyos. These were parceled out equitably to farmers along with technical and financial support. Out of the WW2 ashes, Japan grew and the rest (as they say) is history.

The question thus is:  why was the “reverse” land reform instituted in the Philippines after WW2, like handing large tracts to the hacienderos in Negros, and elsewhere?

Thus, the economic base platform/foundation was set after WW2 for Japan and the Philippines.

The Japanese had pride in land ownership whose hard work was inspired.

As to the Philippine landlord/oligarch, what was there to work hard for anyway?

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