THIS dreaded social practice, sometimes coupled with violence, has unfortunately become embedded in our political system and culture.
Many use it every time they want to advance their vested interests. They use it against those who cross their path or derail their plans.
Even ordinary folk and intellectuals, envious of the authority and powers of the ruling elites or those in position of power, want to apply the same methods to level up their status.
Well, political science has taught us that fault-finding, exaggerating petty things, bragging about oneself and stature, and media publicity doesn’t make governance better nor strengthen development growth.
At their best, they only destroy persons, break up social relationships, prevent development growth process, and put in power the harbinger of destruction.
And because they rose to power via deceit and destructive means, devoid of any coherent, viable, and doable development agenda, they will soon self-destruct, and be replaced by those they destroyed or their like. Thus the spiral of destruction-replacement-destruction becomes endless.
If there are perceived wrongs and bad practices in public service, then development agenda, governance platform, and individual methods and styles of work must be addressed, scrutinized and counter with more coherent and better agenda and platform.
Political science has taught us that our history is a history of struggles between classes, sectors, and territories. But we also know that those struggles are primarily and foremost between ideologies, agenda and platform, and secondarily on the personalities and figures who represent them.
Political science has also taught us that while we have shifted from autocracy and monarchy in feudal times, to the contemporary republics, the ways and means of living and sense of governing of many of us are still characterized by the barbarism of the greedy capitalist-led republics.
Fault-finding and hate campaign don’t make governance better. Improving development agenda and governance platform do, and work only through progressive populist not deceitful and scheming actions.
In the same breadth, elections, impeachment, recall, and other means of constitutionally changing leadership on the basis of fault-finding and hate campaign, don’t make democracy better. At their best, they bastardized and brutalized democracy.
Bacolod outsiders who believe they can bring better development growth and improve governance in the city should forward their coherent agenda and governance platform and subject them to public debates, instead of picking up and building mass hysteria against perceived wrongdoings and shortcomings of the city government, hyping on their tokenism of support or assistance to some of city citizens, and bragging of their superior agenda and platform without unveiling its substance and form.
I don’t think the people of Bacolod would resist such public debates on the incumbents’ achievements and the challengers’ wish lists.
I will even voluntarily help in working out the best conditions for such public debates in the spirit of fellowship and good governance.
In this time of pandemic, not fault-finding, thrash-talking and hate campaign, but understanding, care, patience, constructive criticisms and cooperation are what we need most to ease the individual and collective pains suffer from this worst crisis ever since the immediate post war period.