“It may be forgivable if you defend your kin, right or wrong, if you are just a private citizen, but public interest demands otherwise of public servants”
I have never in my life voted for a straight eight or 12 senators. The first time I voted was in 1967, for Benigno Aquino Jr., Salvador H. Laurel, Emmanuel Pelaez and Larry Henares, two Nacionalistas and two Liberals, at a time when we had a two-party system which makes infinitely more sense than our present multiplicity of flags of convenience masquerading as political parties.
The first three won, but Henares lost.
When the 1987 Constitution took effect, and we had to initially elect 24 senators, I would choose only six to eight names.
My reasons are two-fold: In my own small way, I want to give a multiplier advantage to my favorite candidates. If I elect only four out of 12 candidates, I give each of my choices three votes. The other reason is I vote only for those I truly admire.
So for 2025, my choices are limited to three from Team Sara, one from Team Bongbong, and two who are running as independents.
The two independents might fail to win, as current surveys rate them still low and may not be able to hit the minimum 30 to 35 percent vote to win. Nonetheless, they deserve to be in the Senate.
The only Alyansa candidate I will vote for is one who has proven both competence and integrity in his years in public service, whether as an appointed or elected official. I wished he would retire and take a rest from having to endure the company of clowns and con men, but I guess he is not the type to enjoy smelling the flowers at the break of dawn and marvel at majestic sunsets.
There are friends who no longer need my vote, because they are high up in the surveys, so I would rather help in my own small way those who are still fighting for life.
The two independents who deserve my vote have demonstrated integrity and strict adherence to principle when they were in public service, though voters prefer celebrities whose performance is best characterized by the law of infinitely diminished marginal utility who give the public no incremental returns for their vote.
Many of them populate the Alyansa slate.
The three I have chosen from Team Sara are one from PDP who is better qualified than many who rate in the surveys, and who I expect will author a law that would create a Department of Culture and History, a favorite advocacy of mine.
A neophyte in public service during the previous administration, he nonetheless took further studies to become a lawyer, and thus equipped himself with enough qualification to be a legislator, unlike the unworthy the president endorses.
The other is a lawyer who stood out in the series of inquisitorial hearings in the HoR for his defense of due process, fairness and sanity, just when pharisaic legislators were insulting our intelligence with their bullying antics.
In an interview by Rico Hizon taped in February but aired in the third week of March, I was asked if I thought any of the impeachment trial prosecutors from the HoR could become presidential material in 2028,
I politely said I could not see one. Some of them, thank heavens, are likely to lose in their re-election bid, and for the term-limited, in their desire to be governors or mayors.
My other favorite is one who has the same surname as the Mindanao-hated president, but has courageously defied that politico-cultural aberration about the primacy of blood ties over public interest.
It may be forgivable if you defend your kin, right or wrong, if you are just a private citizen, but public interest demands otherwise of public servants.
If one’s own blood relation is committing egregious errors of governance due to a lack of vision and direction, his pandering to the interests of a foreign power at the expense of flirting with war, and his clear vindictiveness — then that senator who can transcend the cultural demands of kinship is my kind of public servant.
This candidate who seeks re-election after a fruitful term where she has authored significant laws especially those that intend to revive our dying agriculture and food security, has faithfully adhered to the motto of the party she is a member of, which is: “Ang bayan higit sa lahat.”
