THE IRONY OF PHILIPPINE POLITICS

CATEGORY: BLOG: POLITICAL ADOBO

by: humarri, www.watwatworld.com

Philippine political elections is one of the most festive and expensive political events  in the world. According to one politician, you need at least 3 billion pesos to run as the next Philippine president. Simply put, invest so much in the elections for a chance to earn a monthly salary of P100K. Do whatever mathematical calculations you can, it’s just impossible to earn 3 Billion pesos in six years with a monthly salary of 100K/month. So armed with a criminal mind, I can safely say the next president of the Philippines will have to do some magic tricks to earn more than the 3 Billion pesos he invested. There is no such thing as spending 3Billion for the sake of “public service” . It is plain and simple hypocrisy.

This is the happy days for ABS CBN, GMA, TV5, radio stations, print media and PR companies. They earn billions of pesos from the politicians.  At the end of the political festival, the lowly Juan Dela Cruz was entertained but earned nothing and will suffer more.A question arises. How do politicians earn in the Philippines? My answer is simple, CONTRACTS, FAVORS and FRIENDS.

1. Contracts – every Filipino knows that politicians automatically earn 10-50% of every contract they facilitate or sign. This is a fact that is happening but nobody wants to talk about it.  Even the most religious politician is not exempted. Ask any of the public or private contractors during coffee or drinking sessions and they will blatantly accept that fact. There is no clean contract. Every contract has some form of corruption in it either in the amount, form, materials, implementation and automatic deduction. As they say, everybody earns in a contract except the lowly Filipinos. Now, imagine this, the Philippine 2010 national budget is Trillions of pesos, that would mean so many thousands of billions at the mercy of the politicians. With contracts alone, any president can recover his election investment in less than a year.

2. Favors – every politician owes someone something, either monetary or in kind. Campaign funds does not come cheap or free, it always has a price and it is called political favors. One example of political favor is the right of a person or entity to solely operate the jueteng operation in the entire country.

3. Friends – the power to appoint people in administrative positions. I need not expand. You can see this even at the smallest political unit (barangay) in the country.

Having said this, I am disgusted with the political system we have. No amount of election promises can change the current system… BUT it can be ALTERED to benefit more Filipino people. This is happening now. Filipinos are becoming active and participative in political issues  thanks to technology. One example of alteration is the active pressure of the common people who are not linked to any leftist, rightist or militant organization. My favorite example is the rescinded MOA to give Athletic bowl park in Baguio city to the Koreans.  The deal between the Korean investors and the city government went on smoothly and silently until it was exposed. The people of Baguio got angry voicing out their sentiments in online forums. This pressured the politicians and now they are cleaning their hands from the dirt. Thing is, no amount of water can clean their hands. The people are watching you closely. Times has changed. They will listen to your political grandstanding, they will listen to your explanations but will not allow themselves to be influenced by your words. This is altering the traditional political system.

Filipinos today are more vigilant and active. They know that corruption is instituted in every politician that is why they will see to it that more Filipinos will earn and benefit from every political move. Those who say that
they can stop corruption and initiate change are hypocrites to the highest level UNLESS they themselves accept that they will benefit from the position they are running and this includes those who are claiming to be progressive or militant in nature. Nobody is exempted.

The people of the Philippines are watching your every move and no amount of media publicity can save you from the watchful eyes of the public.
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