By Zaldy Dandan
Variety Editor

I WAS asked recently why I have not written anything about the upcoming elections in my sad republic, the land of the fee and home of the bribe. I replied that it’s because I would rather write about problems that could still be solved.
I haven’t changed my mind. It’s just that my deadline is approaching and my computer monitor remains blank. Might as well.
Monday’s elections in the Philippines are for 12 senators, over 230 members of the House of Representatives (which include the 20 or so sectoral representatives), and hundreds of governors, vice governors, provincial board members, mayors, vice mayors and councilors. The millions of qualified Filipino voters who are abroad can cast absentee ballots.
The last time I voted in a Philippine election was in 1992 and my candidate was a World War II guerilla who earned his law degrees from Harvard and Yale, survived the bombing of his party’s political rally in 1971, was imprisoned by the Marcos dictatorship, and went on to become president of the Senate after the 1986 people power revolt. In 1992, backed mainly by leftists like me, Jovy Salonga finished sixth in the seven-way presidential race. Even Imelda Marcos outpolled him.
In 1998, I would have voted for another Ivy League lawyer whose chances of winning were comparable to the odds of hell freezing over. (He was running against Erap.) But the absentee voting act was not yet law. It was enacted in time for the 2004 presidential election when I would have voted for an actor who didn’t even finish eighth grade. I neither registered nor voted, but FPJ still won. But getting the most votes in the Philippines is not the same thing as winning, which is why Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was proclaimed the “winner” by her rubber-stamp Congress, election commission and armed forces.
For this year’s midterm elections, I would have voted for the opposition senatorial slate — “GO,” which stands for “Genuine Opposition,” to distinguish them from the “oppositionists” on the administration ticket, “TU,” which rhymes with ewww and stands for “Team Unity.”
This election is still about Gloria, specifically about the post-Gloria era. She and her family members do not want to be hauled to jail once her term ends in 2010. It is now widely accepted that she, who stole the presidency not once but twice, will hold onto power for the next three years. There was a time when I still believed that my countrymen, descendants of those who heroically resisted tyranny and oppression in the past, would stand up against a fake president.
Right.
I was in Manila in early fall last year and the prevailing mood there was disgust leavened with resignation. Everyone hated the GMA regime; no one wanted to do anything about it. “What for?” my friends told me; “they’re all the same.”
We’re all the same. “Like masters like slaves,” our national hero Jose Rizal once wrote. Rizal has been dead for over 110 years now, yet his teachings and writings remain valid. He still speaks to us. We are still not listening.
We complain of corruption yet we offer bribes to a traffic cop or a government bureaucrat. Or we accept bribes ourselves.
We whine about lawlessness yet we always seek exemptions for ourselves from the same laws.
We wail about the dirt and pollution while throwing garbage anywhere.
We censor “sexy” movies while applauding politicians and officials with multiple spouses.
We’re against abortion and divorces while abortions happen and spouses separate all the time.
The church condemns gambling while benefiting from casino proceeds.
Jueteng and narcotics are illegal. But you and I know where to place bets and get a fix.
We protest the incompetence and criminality of our officials whom we put into office and will put into office again and again.
And again.

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“To my Fatherland: Recorded in the history of human sufferings is a cancer of so malignant a character that the least touch irritates it and awakens in it the sharpest pains. Thus, how many times, when in the midst of modern civilizations I have wished to call thee before me, now to accompany me in memories, now to compare thee with other countries, hath thy dear image presented itself showing a social cancer like to that other!
“Desiring thy welfare, which is our own, and seeking the best treatment, I will do with thee what the ancients did with their sick, exposing them on the steps of the temple so that every one who came to invoke the Divinity might offer them a remedy.
“And to this end, I will strive to reproduce thy condition faithfully, without discriminations; I will raise a part of the veil that covers the evil, sacrificing to truth everything, even vanity itself, since, as thy son, I am conscious that I also suffer from thy defects and weaknesses.”
— José Protacio Rizal Mercado
y Alonso Realonda, Berlin, 1886

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