Trader, tsuper patay sa ambush
The romanticized interpretation is that
The Batangas gubernatorial race shows that performance, not mere celebrity, triumphs over money. Movie star Vilma Santos, after serving well as three-term mayor of
Intriguing is the win of a political tyro priest over sitting Pampanga Gov.-actor Mark Lapid and Provincial Board Member Lilia Pineda. Fr. Ed Panlilio led Pineda by only a thousand votes and Lapid by six thousand, in a pool of 400,000 voters. He represented the alternative choice against two evils: jueteng as supposedly personified by Pineda’s spouse Bong, and excessive quarrying that Lapid permits.
The slim margin shows that good can triumph — but only by a hairline, and if good men do something. Pampanga’s business elite pooled talent and funds with the disaffected middle class and enlightened poor to inspire Panlilio’s campaign. Many hungry voters still sold their votes to the moneyed contenders. Now it’s up to Panlilio to prove within a short three-year term that being good can lead to better lives.
The saddest election lessons were learned in locales where politicos bought votes. It’s like letting the bad genie out of the bottle. The next time around, the voters themselves will auction off their votes — by families, to the highest bidders. That’s what happened in
In Pangasinan’s 4th district, Dagupan City Mayor Benjie Lim accepted defeat in the congressional race against Speaker Jose de Venecia. A son too lost the bid to succeed Lim as mayor. In a statement to concede, Lim hinted that having fought a good fight, they would run again soon. It will be costlier next time. Reports had it that at the start of the campaign, the Lims distributed thousands of bags of groceries. Midway came a wave of home appliances from persons associated with them. Finally on election eve, P500- and P1,000-bills flooded the slums. Having gotten used to such “gifts”, the voters will not just stealthily accept but openly demand payment next time around.
This early in fact, the pampering already raised false hopes among many voters in the district after de Venecia was proclaimed winner. Black propagandists spread the gossip in Dagupan, Mangaldan and Manauag that de Venecia was giving away balato (victory money) to voters. All they had to do was bring any piece of campaign material to de Venecia’s house, and he supposedly will repay them. From Thursday to Saturday, hundreds of gullible folk trudged the highways to where de Venecia lives, only to be told that a sour-grape loser apparently had played a cruel joke on them. Decrying the vote buying, de Venecia’s wife Gina reminded voters he was already on his last term in Congress, so that new leaders would have to succeed him. “But after the kind of vote buying done today, how will younger candidates who have no money win in the future?” she shook her head. “They have ruined the district.”
Candidates who bought votes everywhere collectively have ruined the country. But only a few voters noticed. The rest were so caught up in the campaign euphoria that they ignored other major national events: the Sandiganbayan ruling on the sale of Sequestered San Miguel Corp. shares, the overpriced national broadband network, or the killing of a poll-duty teacher in Batangas.
* * *
Driving along the highway to
It’s a wonder that the mayors, district councilors and barangay officers of those locales let the crooks get away with it for the past ten months or so. Perhaps they want that stretch of highway called Con Artists’ Village.
* * *
E-mail: [email protected]
- Latest
- Trending
