WITH the national and local elections only a few months away, it would be interesting to find out if voters would consider the concern of the many in choosing whom to vote for or if selfish interests take precedence. The latter has always prevailed in elections, especially at the local level. Would there be change?
Traffic, flooding, garbage collection, just to mention a few, have always been talked about in governance but are often downplayed by politicians during elections. People complain when traffic gets messy, when roads and communities get flooded after heavy rain or when trash are uncollected. Yet our elections always seem to be a matter of who bids for our votes the highest.
There are two points there, direct and indirect vote buying. The latter is what we hear being talked about after the elections because by then we already know how much a candidate is offering for the vote. The common thread there is that the candidate that doubles or triples what the other candidate offers for the vote wins. There’s no proof to that but that is the claim.
On indirect vote buying, what comes to my mind is the election for the post of House representative for Cebu City’s south district years ago between Tomas Osmeña, now the city mayor, and businessman Jonathan Guardo. One used his own money to, for example, give coffins for the dead. The other used government money, through a government program, for the purpose. The one with the seemingly infinite resource won.
Cebu City is giving the biggest financial assistance to senior citizens. How that came to be can be an interesting study on indirect vote buying. The upward spiral in financial aid for senior citizens can be linked to the political campaign and the elections. So too the conceptualizing of the financial assistance to other sectors like single parents, etc.
This became part of an election campaign strategy obviously because politicians found it effective. Thus, instead of using government funds in, say, buying garbage trucks or modern traffic lights, these are instead being spent on giving financial assistance to target sectors. And the targeted sectors forget the bigger societal concerns and feel indebted to the politicians who provide them the financial help to the detriment of more important services.
The appraisal of issues has always been a problem in our elections. In the senatorial race, the candidates who were linked to the pork barrel scam may yet be reelected even if they have not been acquitted yet. Imee Marcos, the daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, may yet win a Senate seat. The voters memory, they say, is notoriously short. And that is true.
On this, I would say the Department of Public Works and Highways may rush the completion of the underpass in Mambaling whose construction and the incompetence and personal interests of local government officials in managing the traffic flow have led to commuters’ inconvenience and complaints. Meaning that when the underpass is completed before the elections and traffic flow smoothens there, chances are voters will be thankful and vote for the politicians who made their lives miserable before the project’s completion.