Dilemma, dilemma

Through the Kaisa e-group I received a copy of the list of candidates running for national positions in the coming elections. There are five presidential candidates, four vice presidential candidates (can you name the fourth?), 47 senatorial candidates and 56 groups vying for my party list vote (I am going for either the elderly or the fisherfolk group).

It’s only three weeks before the vote and for the first time in my too-long career as a responsible voter I still have to make up my list of who to vote for. It’s a choice between corruption and incompetence, greed and stupidity, and amongst a basketful of lunatics, crooks and idiots–how is one to choose?

As in past elections where there were multiple candidates, I am told not to waste my vote on a candidate who has "no chance" of winning anyway. But I am not convinced that the so-called "winnability factor" should determine my vote. To go with the winnability argument makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy: if enough people are convinced not to "waste" their vote, then alternative candidates really have no chance. Who knows but maybe there are enough people out there fed up with the system, who will vote their choice no matter what the surveys say about the candidate’s winnability–and let the frontrunners and the surveys go hang.

The senatorial roster is really looking like a bad joke. There are the showbiz folk, ex-athletes, the expected smattering of unknowns who want to be known and a very large dose of political has-beens who, like a bad dream or an irritating mosquito inside the kulambo, refuse to go away. I’m sure the candidates have learned the otso-otso, spaghetti and Pamela song-and-dance routines to charm the crowds at campaign rallies. Others try to have name recall by adopting catchy nicknames: Pambihira, Mr. Palengke, Kidlat, El Cid Marcos, Batas, Wow, Digs.

Over Sunday dinner tonight I must make the family concentrate on the communal exercise of completing our slate. I am so frustrated and disgusted I am tempted to succumb to the inanity of it all and choose the craziest, the most unheard of candidates. But doing so will, of course, not help the situation any; popularity, money and dirty tricks will win, and we will sink even deeper into the mire. So we will have to try really hard and make responsible choices, even if it is just to find the lesser of the evils.