Circus

Philippine elections always had the trappings of a circus. It is a pity that our people have never taken elections seriously. We think of elections as we would beauty contests.

But there is nothing beautiful in our elections… only the ugliness of politicians seeking power to enrich themselves and keep their families entrenched. Then we wonder why we have retrogressed through the years.

Bad as our elections have been, it has never been as horrible as it is today. Three major political dynasties from Northern Luzon, Central Luzon and Mindanao are in a desperate bid to protect their power.

They have made public office a family business and we let them. The musical chairs of substituting candidates has made a mockery of our electoral process. Binabastos na ang taong bayan.

Thus far, only Leni Robredo has even started talking of what she intends to do as President with some details. She is the only one who has given our health concerns some thinking on how to do government response right, with the help of two respected former health secretaries.

Isko has talked about reducing gasoline taxes and PacMan wants to build housing for the poor. These are populist issues that need implementation details. Another talks of the imagined “golden age” of his father’s reign, which is fake news if historical economic numbers are reviewed.

I suggest that the presidential candidates be required to make their SALN public and sign a waiver of bank secrecy so their accounts can be examined.

I think it is also important that they be made to name key members of their cabinet now. We need to see their shadow Cabinet.

The reality is, not all the candidates can be reasonably expected to be conversant on all the major issues a president must deal with. They will depend on Cabinet secretaries. Let us hear from them now.

I am not asking for the candidates to name the entire Cabinet, but only those really important ones: Finance, National Defense, Energy, Education, Agriculture, DICT, DILG and Health.

The nominees for Finance must be able to answer questions on our national indebtedness and how to deal with corruption in the tax collection bureaus.

The nominees for National Defense must give us an idea of their views on the West Philippine Sea, alliance with the US, China threat and the insurgency.

The nominees for Energy must be able to tell us how he or she plans to get out of the mess we are in right now in terms of reliable power supply, high power costs and energy security.

The nominees for Education must have a good idea of how to dramatically improve the quality of public education so that our young people don’t always test at the bottom of a list of peers from other countries.

A badly educated workforce will not make us economically competitive and will worsen unemployment. Forget what some people say about our large number of working age population enabling us to cash in on our demographic dividend. Without good jobs, they have little or no consumer buying power.

Agriculture and our farmers have been neglected too much for so long. Yet, food security is very important. Let us hear how they plan to address productivity issues in agriculture specially with climate change.

How can we attract younger farmers to grow our food and not condemn them to poverty? Worrisome to know that the average age of our farmers is 53, suggesting we will soon have a critical shortage of farmers.

The nominees for DICT must be a digital native, one who has experience working in the digital world and knows what is required for our country to catch up. This is one Cabinet position that must be filled up by a technocrat, not a fading politician that Duterte chose.

The nominees for DILG must not be retired generals, but someone like the late Jesse Robredo who knows local government well. This is a key department that must have civilian thinking, specially because the PNP has an identity problem about being a civilian force.

Perhaps the most critical position at this time is that of the Secretary of Health. Not only must the next one be highly competent in managing a problematic bureaucracy, he or she must be very conversant with public health issues.

Aside from the COVID pandemic, the new health secretary must have a good plan on how to boost our health infrastructure that includes not just buildings, but well trained and well paid health workers.

Announcing their key Cabinet picks early will give us a good idea of who are the influential people behind a candidate, assess capabilities and integrity. In reality, we are voting not just for the candidate, but for the people in his or her team.

Having Cabinet nominees speak out will also hopefully elevate the level of political discussions because we will get the opportunity to go deeper into important issues. If we had this during the last election, it would have been easy to see that Duterte’s first tourism secretary and energy secretary nominees are over their heads.

Running a government is a team effort, much like a basketball team trying to win a championship. Consider the election process as some kind of an elimination round leading to a championship.

Naming Cabinet members early will also give us an idea of the vested interests they represent, if any. It also gives us an opportunity to measure the ability of the presidential candidate to attract capable people into his team. We would have found out early that Duterte has a limited talent pool.

And by letting the Cabinet nominees go through the rigor of the campaign, a team spirit can be developed that will help the new administration. The technocrats among them will get a good idea of what matters on the ground beyond their Harvard training. The candidate will also be exposed repeatedly to discussions of critical issues.

We will have a very important election next year. Let us make sure we do not compromise our children’s future by letting the traditional politicians reduce it into a circus.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco