“This Monday, let us turn to our conscience and reclaim our choice”
TODAY, I remember the words of a prayer attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola — the prayer for generosity — where we ask the Almighty to “give and not to count the cost.”.
May 12 marks another day in our nation’s books. Three years after the consequential landslide win of the Marcos-Duterte tandem, or the UniTeam, the Marcos administration’s fate is set to be tested in the upcoming midterms on Monday. Half of those in the Senate and 300-ish seats in the House are up for grabs by those who wish to claim and reclaim their seats.
On Monday, we will all take part in our duty to vote. A civic duty. One that we ought to do as Filipinos.
Depending on how one would perceive it, we are not incentivized to stand in line, waiting for our chance to fill that empty ballot.
We’d go there to queue ourselves in an awful line that would span for whatever distance your polling place may be from your spot. We’d be forced to endure the scorching heat of the sun for minutes, or hours, for us to — wait for it — transfer to a more comfortable waiting area where we can rest our feet under plastic seats. From there, the waiting game continues. With our mindless scrolling on our phones and the heat circling around the place as our company, it would be fair enough to say our patience can begin to run out.
You’d only feel some relief upon taking a seat, casting your vote with or without your cheat sheets, and having that ballot be fed by the automated ballot box with that seal placed on your finger. Right then and there, you can finally be proud and exclaim your right as a Filipino.
Yet again, we are not being paid to exercise our vote!
Unfortunately, this will never be the case come election day.
Local campaigns this year have proved themselves to be the dirtiest I have seen today. Newcomers with their own machinery are staging their chances through the magic of cash. One candidate’s strongest asset is through the power and glamour of a P1000 bill, which they can use to feed on voters who are in need of that amount. These shameless names and their associates can do it in secret for all I’d care, yet this has been revealed out in the (redacted) open!
Tomfoolery, they would say. After all, it would be easy to blame the voter for relying on that shining piece of cash to trade their own, conscientiously civic duty.
Yet we must understand the poor and that cash for their own survival. In this milieu where prices are rising high, that bill they would accept from these candidates would be beneficial to buy themselves their own meal for that day. A P1000 bill could be enough to work around that amount and have themselves sustained for that day.
Nevertheless, we must not understate the fact that the amount they have received in exchange for their conscientious vote could spell deep regress in any affected community. Politicians in these areas will work their way to entrench themselves in power by all means. Their huge and unexplainable wealth was paid by us who are induced to pay some form of taxes, only for them to put that great amount into their own pockets.
We can only live through this cycle every three years or so. Enduring this practice can only lead us to apathy over our leaders, whose fate in these names written in the cash gifts we have received we have placed into, and in their gross politicking.
This Monday, let us turn to our conscience and reclaim our choice. Let us not be paid to exercise our right. Our civic duty holds deep sense. Our vote must lead to progressive change.
Hello again, Pilipinas. Are we ready?
(The author tries to cure his haywire from his personal grind as he writes essays away from the news. For comments, you may reach him at ngrolando2003@yahoo.com.)
