Actor, winner; lawyer loser

Before anything else, let me express my gratitude to the administration of The Freeman for accepting me to write my column again starting, coincidentally, in its 103rd anniversary. Happy anniversary!

When was the last time you went to a mall and while you gawk at the number of people doing their shopping, there came a buzz that a movie star (let’s assign him the name Martin) was there too? Did you notice a sudden inexplicable change of the atmosphere? Angst began to develop as if people felt a live wire. Somehow the muted murmurs rose to disturbing shrieks. Hundreds of adoring fans got emotionally stirred as they gravitated towards where the actor was. Surely, it was not idolatry but fascination of the kind that years of prime time television developed. You could only marvel at the pronounced ecstasy generated by the showbiz personality.

Then, consider this. One day, I saw a man examining a line of expensive shirts. Yes, in a mall too. In his dapper outfit, he projected an aura of success. Well, I knew him. For this article, let me call him Atty. Sarausad, a son of a classmate of mine in law school. Not very long ago, he hit the front page of newspapers for placing in the top ten of bar examinees. Radio and television reporters then raced to get the scoop of interviewing him. But, as soon as the ink on the newspaper dried up or the broadcast got completed, the attorney in the news went to a proverbial oblivion. When I saw him, he did not catch the public eye anymore. No one seemed to pay him any attention. He was as ordinary as most people were in the mall.

If you read again the comparison between a movie star and a bar topnotcher that I made above, you might agree that there is an undefinable degree of preference prevailing in our peoples’ mind set. Society is inclined to put premium value on the fame of an actor than on the intellect of a lawyer.

For a lack of a more scientific methodology, let us take the case of actor Robin Padilla and lawyer Gibo Teodoro both candidates for senator in the May 2022 elections. There is no doubt that Robin, now Senator Padilla, is a heartthrob of Philippine movies. Hordes of fans watch every film he stars in or directs. His supporters include shrieking millennials and nodding adults. Even his private life cannot escape the incursions of paparazzi. When a court of law pronounced him guilty of a criminal offense, the number of his fans did not considerably diminish. The stigma of a convict, although apparently erased by presidential pardon, did not deter more than 27 million voters from making him number 1 in the senate race.

On the other hand, bar topnotcher Gibo Teodoro did not even get one half of Sen. Padilla’s votes. Only 12 million plus electors, mindful of the job of a senator, chose him. The preference of Filipinos between the two of them is loud and clear.

What about the result of our democratic exercise? It is possible that more Filipinos believe that Robin is better than Gibo in many things including writing laws. Not me. There is no question that a man who studies volumes of legal writings is better equipped to write laws than the one who reads movie scripts. Sadly, our peoples’ preference made the actor a winner but threw the lawyer to the losers’ bracket.