Taking the temperature  

The mood surrounding me isn’t exactly upbeat. The latest surveys are out --and the results for the pink campaign weren’t heartwarming. More like dampeners, as the Uniteam candidate is still way in front, and the Leni-Kiko campaign barely moved the needle in their favor.

Someone asked, are these surveyors even reliable? Are they just paid hacks by politicians, selecting respondents to correspond to the desired results? Who exactly are the trusted surveyors?

That was a pretty hard question to tackle, but it brought to mind a proposal I received last year to join a new outfit that would conduct surveys on behalf of political candidates. The methodology was simple: all it would take would be to design questions guaranteed to produce the desired responses. Pretty easy pickings for wordsmiths with a bit of a psychology background.

In any case, election day is right here - just a few more hours and we will have a new president to take over the mantle from the previous disastrous administration. She will inherit a failed COVID-19 response, an economy still in shock, countless crony deals, and higher poverty numbers. Will she be up to the job? Will she grapple with these systemic issues in a systematic fashion, utilizing the six years given to her in the most efficient way possible?

(Our professor at the University of Michigan made sure he was politically correct by continually using the pronoun “she” regardless of gender. Today, he is doubtless left behind by the times because professors have to pay attention to the preferred pronoun dictated by the student. They? It? Whatever. In his honor, I have decided to ape him when referring to the forthcoming president.)

Meanwhile, as we count down the hours, we are left in tenterhooks. A nation in limbo, awaiting either deliverance from evil, or a return to the clutches of corrupt politicians and heartless oligarchs determined to keep their hold on this carcass.

What a choice. And yet, the choice doesn’t seem that clear to many Filipinos, if we are to believe the surveys. With a supposed majority opting for a rule by a useless junkie, instead of the good governance platform espoused by Leni and Kiko, it doesn’t bode well for this nation.

Perhaps the question we should pose is, why are they choosing that way? When offered an alternative with proven capability, with a track record of service, and with an electrifying record for mobilizing the populace into doing good, why choose another?

Is it a question of campaign tactics? That one campaign did better in mobilizing social media and buying spot ads? That another candidate fielded fake news and trolls whereas another campaign didn’t? That the Robredo-Pangilinan campaign spent too much time and resources on fighting the damaging fake news that churned out from the other camps?

Or is it a question of charisma? That the respondents couldn’t connect with Leni and Kiko? That Kiko was seen as too elitist or unapproachable? (I can attest to Kiko’s political glamour when he was student president at the University of the Philippines. Already a tall, serious-looking campus heartthrob, his victory in the student populace was assured. Yet that serious, authoritative demeanor that suited him so well as a student leader and in his later days as a Senator didn’t seem to translate well among the survey respondents?)

Is it a question of gender? Is it because the respondents doesn’t like to think of the caring, empathetic Leni as their president, and they all yearn for an autocratic leader that brooks no question or dissent, much like the Duterte model?

Is it really a question of miseducation or brainwashing? Of a successful revisionism campaign that saw children’s textbooks altered subtly to color the perception of young generations, that viewed the Marcos years as “golden” while the yellow administrations of Cory and Noynoy were cast in an unfavorable light?

No matter. The die has been cast, and we shall soon wake up to a new tomorrow. If it’s a better tomorrow, then the pink fever was a sign of future recovery. There is so much riding on this election, that it breaks the heart to think of how close we are to redemption.

Pass the meds, please.