Thursday, April 15, 2004
Yap: Campaign
By Januar E.Yap
Meanwhile
Either by accident, curiosity, or deliberate social studies, I’ve found myself in the thick of campaigns for many elections now. Many summers ago, as a little kid with a bad case of running nose, I’d walk a few blocks to watch the campaign rallies of PDP-Laban or Panaghiusa, which had Tony Cuenco and Marcelo Fernan as standard-bearers. I remember that jingle that went “Panaghiusa will never die…”
History, however, is a cruel satirist. Panaghiusa’s miting de avance site is that lot adjacent what is now the University of Cebu. A few meters further, where now stands a parking lot for Gaisano Metro Colon customers, was the rally site for the KBL, the administration party.
The opposition’s rallies, of course, had a long queue of angry speakers who’d conflagrate on stage, spewing diatribes against the dictatorship or the status quo. Someone utters the word “diktador,” and that was enough to spark the fuse of the throng, who’d respond with a deluge of “Laban!”
Entertainment, ah, it only came as intermission, some comic breather in between highly charged speeches. And by intermission, you don’t mean diversion. Still, the jokes, or stunts or songs, were tethered on life-and-death issues, like freedom and democracy.
This was probably the golden age of Pinoy Rock, too. Activist asongs were pop.
Alongside the weird fashion of the ‘80s and its dose of R&B, Pinoy Rock competed in the music scene. Maybe not so much in the airwaves, but it surely was hip in universities. Pinoy Rock was a thing to expect during rallies, and Asin led the league.
Why am I remembering all these? It’s just that I don’t see it anymore in our campaign rallies today. You instead get Eddie Gutierez doing that stupid Elvis stunt or the Sex Bomb Dancers swaying their hips to the tune of “Forget your woes, Philippines!”
I don’t know if we’ve deteriorated as a thinking body politic, but that seems so with the quality of leaders we elect. I’ve drawn my awareness of our politics when I was this little street initiate and it seemed that we were then a citizenry headed for greatness. But then again, history is a cruel satirist.
Meanwhile, just give me one campaign speech, just one that’ll move me to the bones, and I’ll give you fifty.
(April 15, 2004 issue)
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