The importance of being a nuisance

If there’s anything this movie-going generation should have learned by now, it’s that unlikeable characters — like Jar Jar Binks, Sadness from Pixar’s Inside Out, and all the bums Owen Wilson portrays — are out to do the greatest things. Despite their awkward, annoying, and blundering personalities, their reasons-for-being surreptitiously come to fruition at the story’s climax… and with plenty of fanfare, they save the world.

Unfortunately, the lessons movies teach are bound to get lost on a viewing public which firmly believes that fact and fiction do not — and should not ever — overlap. As far as people are concerned, fiction, no matter how well-written, has to stay in the realm of disbelief. In real life, it seems that we’ve been hardwired to laugh at and crucify bearded, ambitious men who sport their hair up to their shoulders. In real life, we’re supposed to call them “nuisance candidates.”

Once upon a time, when elections were still new for Filipinos in 1907, there were hardly any nuisance candidates. The requirements for candidacy were cutthroat: the candidate must be a man who owns a sizeable portion of land, and he must be an ex-appointee of the previous colonizer or he must at least be able to speak in either Spanish or English. The same requirements applied to the voters; there were no “uneducated” voters at that time. Imagine how they laughed at small folk who thought of running… or even voting.

These requirements changed only slightly in the succeeding decades under American rule. The right to suffrage remained a privilege granted to a few. Thus, those who won the elections were all from the same breed as your local political dynasty today (some of them planting their roots during this era), and they passed one pro-haciendero law after another. Election results were — as election results are, now — a good reflection of the prevailing ideas of the electorate. The majority of Filipinos, the poor who never got to run or vote, naturally didn’t get any representation in what was Congress before.

Democracy at work

While much has changed since then, much remains the same. Our rights to run for office and to vote have both come a long way. Taxpayer or not, as long as a Filipino citizen is of legal age and registered, then he/she is entitled to a vote. On the part of those running for office, discriminatory prerequisites were removed, such as the ability to speak a foreign language, a specific gender, or owning a hacienda. Only a certain age, period of residency, and the ability to read and write are now required of natural-born Filipinos who wish to run for President. So, as far as the law is concerned, filing candidacy and voting are basic rights already granted by the State. The electoral system is democracy at work.

Because of the widened participation of voters, the elections are now the most precise measure of social satisfaction or discontent. (Whether it is accurate or not/whether we’re being cheated or not, are the perennial questions we try to answer after the votes are counted.) The elections should now paint a fairer picture of who the people want to lead the country compared to a century ago. And for those who don’t approve of protesting, the elections are the state-approved way of “dissent”: you can opt not to vote for anyone; you can vote for the opponent of the candidate you hate; you can even choose to run against them. The elections is a time for government to take a good, hard look at itself, a time to ask whether it has answered to its people’s needs well enough or not.

But before the elections even take place, the presence of “nuisance candidates” and their platforms are already indicative of some of our country’s problems. And on its own, the fact that there are more than 50 candidates for President (as of writing) says a lot.

Our government has become a carnival

Daniel Magtira, running for Senate, claims he’s running because he’s Kris Aquino’s “hubby” — now, isn’t that proof of how much Aquino’s nepotism has seeped into our heads? Romeo John Reyes, a.k.a. Archangel Lucifer, and other Bible-toting candidates/Nazis are indications of how much we’ve used spirituality for our worldly ambitions.

Other candidates, whose main platforms consist of switching our electric outputs from 220V to 110V in order to save electricity, or giving one million pesos to every Filipino to eliminate poverty, or legalizing the four seasons to end natural calamities, are all indicative of the tragic situation of our educational system today. (What are they teaching in our schools? Do we even have schools?) But at the same time, these personalities unwittingly criticize government by the mere virtue of their filing. It seems that they’ve realized that our government has become a carnival, so why the need to suit up and talk like a statesman?

However, it cannot be denied that there are those who are grounded but will be disqualified by the COMELEC on the grounds that they do not have/cannot fund a nationwide campaign. It will be a wet towel for people like Florencio Urquia who, coming from humble origins, sincerely wants help for the 30 million Filipino farmers. It is strange that people mock honest candidates like him for “not having the capacity to lead,” when a Senator who, in his time, authored zero bills went up to become President five years ago.

Sometimes, a part of me wishes that the movies we watch were more real and that these unlikely characters had a fairer chance. For there was a time when a bar topnotcher ran as the most logical and sensible candidate for the presidency, but he only did the country worse. Nonetheless, there remains some hope in me for these “nuisance candidates.” Because once upon a time, average people like you and me were the “nuisance voters.”

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