POLITICS, as some observers from the academe see it, is a pursuit of the possible.
Anyone who would indulge in it should have sharp eyes for opportunities through which they could achieve their goals.
This has never been more affirmed than during the current election campaign.
Typifying this phenomenon is the recent political occurrence in this island province, which has an estimated 2.5 million voters.
Local political leaders are initiating separate national political affiliations and supporting a hodgepodge of senatorial, vice- presidential, and presidential candidates, thus generating a “happy” political concoction.
Free-for-all
That such an expression of political opportunism may be construed as a feature of a dynamic democracy, may not be farfetched.
But then, set up against the innate ethical values which our deep Christian morality upholds, something is decidedly amiss here.
Yet this is what the country’s multi-party system has given birth to, after going through the crucible of an elitist two party system where only the nation’s elites took turns in ruling the country.
Incensed with a situation where the talented poor and middle class youth could not have the opportunity to lead, the Progressive Party of the Philippines of Sens. Raul Manglapus and Manuel Manahan pushed for a multi-party system.
Thus, during the post-martial rule constitutional convention, the multi-party system was worked into the new charter, and presto, political parties big and small, at the local and national levels, including party list groups sprouted all over the republic.
So now, we have become witness to a nationwide phenomenon of a political free-for- all.
Bias
One Cebu party aptly illustrated this political phenomenon.
Organized by the province’s first woman governor, it proclaimed over the week-end its support for the presidential candidate of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD party.
The vice-presidential candidate it is supporting, however, belongs to the Nacionalista Party, while its senatorial candidates are from other parties.
Surprisingly, One Cebu’s senatorial slate does not have one true-blue Cebuano candidate, and hence the party has caused a good number of eyebrows to raise, wondering how objective and unbiased the criteria used to pick the choice had been.