Honesty as first yardstick for voters to rate candidates

“All candidates lie... Honesty should not be an election issue,” Sara Duterte famously said about the 2019 balloting. President-father Rodrigo Duterte was evasive when asked for reaction. The presidential spokesman was mum. Opposition senatorial candidates had decried their opponents’ dishonesty in personal biodata and with public funds. They all lost.

Candidates ignore the constitutional requirement of integrity. Important for them is campaign messaging, derived from surveys. Issues topmost in people’s minds nowadays are livelihood, prices and pandemic relief. So candidates tailor their promises to pollsters’ findings: jobs for all, price control, free medicines. “Never mind the details, those will come later after you elect me.”

The trick works. Candidates know that voters look for five M’s from them: matulungin (helpful), matatas (glib), malalapitan (approachable), marunong (able), malinis (clean), in that order. Helpfulness and approachability often denote the negative or narrow sense: what a voter can get for him/herself. Glibness and ability seem to ask to be set up for the sting. Only the last is for the good of all.

And so the Filipino is unable to get out of the social rut. Thinking of self instead of community on Election Day, he keeps the political class in power for years thereafter. “Hindi naman makakain ang honesty.” The hungry man is not a free man. Pandemic has impoverished more families than ever.

Can honesty be an election issue, the first yardstick for any candidate? Capability and vision are critical, but those will work only if grounded on sincerity. NGOs like KontraDaya and Lente specialize as watchdogs by keeping the campaigns clean. Exposure of dirty tactics reflect on candidates’ character.

Honesty cuts both ways. Voters too need to be clean about their choices, not for cash or favors, but sincere belief in and desire for the common good. A tall order.

Voter educators upholding Honesty First proliferated in the first few post-EDSA elections. Their numbers have dwindled, perhaps by attrition of age, emigration, cooptation or exhaustion.

Last Saturday an 18,000-strong organization resumed its three-yearly crusade for uprightness among candidates. The Brotherhood of Christian Businessmen and Professionals launched “Tapatan ng Tapat” to champion and defend the values of truth, integrity and transparency in Election 2022. “The challenge is to place the virtue of honesty at the forefront of a person’s moral compass, which becomes his or her basis for choices and actions,” BCBP president PV Beley said.

Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines president, exemplified what honesty is about and what it is not. “Truth is the same as being in the right path as opposed to being lost or misled. Where is this path supposed to lead us? It is the path to fullness of life,” he told the BCBP global breakfast-forum.

BCBP is non-partisan. But Bishop David chided disinformation by some candidates. Example: the claim that Ferdinand Marcos’ kleptocracy were the golden years of the Philippines. “Good heavens!” he remarked of the need to straighten out fakery. “Martial law was simply a democratically elected leader wanting to stay in power longer than the Constitution allowed him... He suppressed freedom of speech and legitimate dissent... We cannot afford to keep quiet when some candidates claimed that the best government we ever had was the Marcos dictatorship... It is not just an alternative narrative but a blatant lie. A misrepresentation of events. It is not just a revision, but a falsification of history. It is every bit morally wrong.”

Tapatan ng Tapat aims to make candidates disclose, when elected, their yearly Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth. It’s a legal requirement, yet public officials concoct technicalities to avoid publicizing their SALNs. “Be honest, even if others are not, even if others will not, even if others cannot,” Noel delos Reyes reiterated the BCBP slogan since 2004.

Pledging SALN disclosure can be a test of officeholders’ honesty. They deserve the honorific “solon” only if they abide by the 6th century B.C. Athenian archon’s dictum: “I would rather be just and trustworthy and follow the path that is right than have all the power and wealth in the world.”

But voters need to rate candidates before going to the polling precincts. Aspirants who are present or past officials can perhaps post online their last three SALNs to show clean intentions. Anyone who refuses can be asked to say why. Those with unexplained wealth can be scratched out of the voters’ choices.