Vested Interest in the Campaign

Talisay has never been spared in this kind of politics, may it be fifty years ago or at present. If we can honestly get out of this perennial dilemma, then we can certainly and truly start to say that authentic development and heartfelt service to the people of Talisay will commence.

Below is the full text of a Bicolano columnist to ponder with...

There's the Rub
For the record
By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 05:09:00 08/09/2010

Filed Under: Inquirer Politics, Benigno Aquino III, Eleksyon 2010, Elections
Most Read
I’VE HEARD recently that I’ve been mentioned in a few blogs and articles that suggest I might have strayed beyond the bounds of journalism in endorsing Noynoy Aquino during the elections. I normally wouldn’t mind it: People are entitled to their opinions. But given that it concerns the integrity of the profession I’ve embraced, or the practice I’ve been practicing for more than 23 years now, which is writing columns—I began “There’s the Rub” way back in 1987 in the Daily Globe—I feel I have to set the record straight.

One, did I campaign for Aquino?

Depends on what you mean by campaign. I’ve always been clear about what I was campaigning for. That was not for someone to win an election, that was someone to wage a liberation. For close to a decade, we had been ruled despotically by someone who never got voted into power, who until it happened looked nowhere headed to give up power. But Cory died, and gave birth to Noynoy, in more ways than one.

The elections were incidental, the liberation was essential. That is the reason I kept saying what we had was an Edsa masquerading as an election. If the elections had not been around the corner, I was fully convinced the storm that gathered during Cory’s funeral march would have broken into a full-blown public uprising, like the last two Edsas. My conviction was borne out by the “Noynoy phenomenon.” Why would someone who never figured remotely among the “presidentiables” suddenly leave everyone biting his dust? Quite simply because the public did not see him as an ordinary candidate joining an ordinary election. The public saw him as an unlikely hero—I used variously Frodo, Arthur and the Lion King, to underscore the mythological aspect of it—undertaking an extraordinary project.

From the start, my advice to the Aquino camp was to not—repeat, to not—turn the campaign into a mere electoral one. The people saw much, much more than that, the people expected much, much more than that. I said the situation was exactly like the snap elections of 1986: Cory didn’t fight to become president when she joined that election, she fought for something vaster, grander, more life-and-death. I explicitly said that in a column during the anniversary of Edsa: Cory became president by not wanting to become president. Cory became president by fighting to free the country from Marcos. Noynoy too would become president by not wanting to be president. He would become president by fighting to free the country from Gloria.

Each time I hear about people who now claim to have won the election, or who contributed to winning the election, for P-Noy, I laugh. That claim is its own refutation. It’s the clearest sign they never had a clue. It was precisely by seeing the project as just another election and Noynoy as just another bet that made him fall, turning his wings of fire into feet of clay. It was precisely by tunneling the vision into what campaign pitch, line and slogan needed to be manufactured to make Noynoy president that they almost made him not so, turning the sublime into the paralytic. At a time when the people needed a hero, they were given a politician. An honest and well-meaning politician, but still a politician. Thank God there was enough of the power of Edsa to see him through.

My advice was little heeded anyway. And when I realized the narrow framework of elections had superimposed itself upon everything, people merely asking how they might pull Noynoy past Villar, I drifted away. And contented myself, however the last thing it brought was contentment, to reminding the campaign of its origins in Edsa and its future in Edsa. I never even bothered to think I would be betraying my calling as a columnist to be campaigning simply to make someone president. I just wasn’t interested.

Two, did I have a vested interest in the campaign?

I will not say, depends on what you mean by vested interest. Vested interested is fairly cut and dried. It means being paid by the campaign, handling money for the campaign, deriving financial gain from the campaign, holding a position in the party running the campaign, getting a position in government after the campaign, expecting to get a position in government after the campaign. Did I do any of those?

No.

I have no problems with being partisan, I have problems with being partisan for gain. Saying it’s OK to be paid because you believe in a cause anyway is self-deluding, if at all people who get into this bother to delude themselves. You’ll end up being inconsistent, half-hearted, self-inhibiting or self-censuring. The test of the pudding is in the eating, and the nice thing about column-writing is that the pudding is there for the eating. Or the proof of what you are all about is plain to see, in all its naked glory, or miserableness.

I have yet to know where in my columns I deviated from my original proposition that the elections were an Edsa masquerading as an election, that it was from the very start about People Power and should be to the very end about People Power. Or where I hesitated to criticize, upbraid, quarrel with those I deemed to have obstructed it, or are obstructing it.

I’ve always thought people in media who took partisan positions particularly in elections, masquerade or otherwise, should agree not to seek positions in government afterward. Because however you justify it, it will always look like deferred payment, in kind if not in cash, in ROI if not in COD. But that’s just me. I leave others to their sense of propriety.

This is at least the way I see my actions these past months. Unlike Romy Neri, I will not say I will be the judge of that. There are my readers and my employers to do that. But will I do it all over again given half the chance?

You bet I would.

Dirty Politics

Search Google with the key string “smear campaign Philippine elections” and you’ll get a list, about four pages long, of the same Agence France Presse (AFP) report by Maynardo Macaraig entitled “Internet fuels Philippine election smear campaigns.” It reads in part:

Philippine politics has plunged to ugly lows ahead of next month’s presidential election as candidates take advantage of the Internet and mobile phones to smear their rivals, analysts say.

Among the worst examples, front runner Benigno Aquino has had to deal with a hoax psychiatric report claiming he is mentally ill and took drugs, while his main opponent, Manny Villar, has been accused of lying about his dead brother.

“They have reached a new kind of low,” said Jorge Tigno, associate professor of political science at the University of the Philippines, referring to the mudslinging campaign tactics being employed by the presidential candidates.

In the past, those vying for the presidency in the Philippines were generally seen to be above the heated rivalries of lower-level politicians, according to Tigno.

Huh? I have this uncanny feeling that during elections held when radio first become a popular and widespread medium, people said the same thing – radio fueled smear campaigns. Then, there was television. Today, it’s the Internet and mobile phones.

Get real, people. Politics is dirty and it is getting dirtier. Not because new technologies like the Internet and mobile phones make it easier and faster to circulate campaign information but because tactics of the past are already overused and people can already see through them. Ergo, the image consultants and the political handlers dream up of other ways to capture the attention of the public. Heck, who needs the internet and mobile phones to spread rumors? Rumor mongering is as old as man and it will be part of human experience long after the Internet and mobile phones are superseded by newer and more sophisticated technologies.

Ah, the need to point a finger to deflect the blame from the real culprits. Politics get dirty because the players are dirty. What’s so hard to understand about that? Politics has always been dirty business. It has always been full of intrigues and smear campaigns. It has often been marked by violence. And it isn’t just Philippine politics that illustrate these characteristics. The filth of politics transcends era and culture.

Transcends era and culture? Sure. When Julius Caesar was just starting to rise to power, his tactics to capture the consulship was described by Greek historian and biographer Plutarch in “Parallel Lives.” He wrote: “Of the two other candidates for this office, Lucius Lucceius and Marcus Bibulus, Caesar joined forces with the former, making a bargain with him that since Lucceius had less influence but more funds, he should in their common name promise largess to the electors from his own pocket. When this became known, the aristocracy authorized Bibulus to promise the same amount, being seized with fear that Caesar would stick at nothing when he became chief magistrate, if he had a colleague who was heart and soul with him. Many of them contributed to the fund, and even Cato did not deny that bribery under such circumstances was for the good of the commonwealth. So Caesar was chosen consul with Bibulus…”

Dirty political wheeling and dealing, pure and simple. After that, Julius Caesar tried to dominate Roman politics with his First Triumvirate, an “informal” alliance with Crassus and Pompey, two of the most powerful Roman politicians of the time. And after gaining control of government, he centralized the bureaucracy and became a dictator. The Roman senators thought he was going to get rid of them by dissolving the Senate so they assassinated him in 44 BC.

In English history, the House of Tudors (1485 to 1603) was beset by political intrigues from beginning to end with issues like usurpation (which led to the execution of Lady Jane Grey) and illegitimacy (Elizabeth I was considered by the Catholics in England to be an illegitimate child of Henry VIII). Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I, was accused of adultery and incest, none of which could be proven, but for which she was eventually beheaded (officially, the crime was treason as adultery to the king was considered high treason) just so the Seymour family, by marrying off their Jane to Henry, could rise to power and prominence which, naturally, translated into wealth.

Let’s have an example that many of us are familiar with. When Ferdinand Marcos was consolidating his power, after declaring Martial Law in 1972, what were among his first acts? Brand his critics as communists and anarchists, have them arrested, and close down newspapers, radio and television stations so that only his version of the true state of the nation would be disseminated.

The truth is, in any political exercise, when the highest power is at stake, people go to all lengths and stoop to the lowest levels, to win. And because every claimant to power is surrounded by people who expect to profit from his victory, they are just as willing as he is to propagate lies, both in his favor and against his opponents, if the lies can be translated into votes (in an election) or popular support (in a non-election such as an insurrection or a rebellion).

It’s less than a month before the presidential elections. We read and hear about dirty political tactics made by, or on the behest of, the contenders and the political analysts, the so-called experts, are blaming the Internet and mobile phone technology? Oh, come on. The rumor mongers are getting more creative but analysts are still sticking to old school analysis?

**Filed under Sassy Lawyer**

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