DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Poverty, gimmickry and the politician
Sunday, 06 28, 2009
The jaded cynic that I am, I tend to recoil from politicians who project an image that panders to the poor voter’s vicarious tendency to favor the underdog. I sense an underlying condescension and a disguised trace of manipulation there.
The late Camilo Osias used to reminisce that he was once a bootblack, but it was not because of his lowly origins but on the strength of his achievements — first Filipino superintendent of schools; author of The Philippine Reader; resident commissioner in the US Congress; member of the 1934 Constitutional Convention; secretary of Education — that he was elected by the people to the Senate.
When Osias sought the nomination as presidential candidate of the Nacionalista Party in the 1953 elections, he was trounced by somebody who was simply touted as “the mechanic from Zambales,” never mind Ramon Magsaysay’s other qualifications as congressman and former Defense secretary.
Thus began the fascination of the masa — the poor voters in the rural areas and the city slums — for the politician who rose from poverty. It was as if the overriding qualification to be elected to a higher office was that one had to be “born in a disreputable, lowly, old palm-frond (nipa-shingled) shack that stood on bamboo stilts and installed on a kind neighbor’s lot.” (The heart-wrenching prose is taken from Sol Gwekoh’s biography of the Poor Boy from Lubao, entitled Diosdado Macapagal: Triumph over Poverty, with the subtitle, The Colorful Biography of the Common Man from Pampanga Who Became the President of the Philippine Republic.)
A lot of voters out there are always pushovers to this poor-boy-who-made-good story, despite being bludgeoned into senselessness by the daily sensory overload in the tri-media extolling a politician’s impoverished origins.
If the surveys are to be believed, then the emphasis on Sen. Manuel Villar Jr.’s having been a poor boy who made good is reaping dividends for him. He is up there in the surveys, while his opponents who belong to the old rich, the nouveau riche and dubiously rich are very far behind.
The poor voter who believes in that vanished image of long-ago of the politician yearns for a similar success story to happen to him. He is dazzled, spellbound and blinded by what he sees in a once poor boy like him. It makes that poor voter dependent on the recipe for success of the politician. Therein lies the exploitation, intended or not.
What had made the politician succeed may not necessarily be the same recipe that would assure the poor voter his share of the pie in the sky. Villar, for instance, was lucky to have studied in the premier State university of the country. Is the poor voter similarly lucky to have the kind of education that Villar got? Villar was lucky to have wooed and wed the daughter of a successful local politician, which is not necessarily true to the poor voter. Villar was lucky to have morphed his marriage to a political family into a successful venture into politics himself, but that opportunity is never going to happen to the poor voter. Villar was lucky to have successfully used his business acumen together with the political positions he has held, but the poor voter would never have that kind of opportunity or chance.
The drift of the present-day infomercials pandering to the poor is exploitation: Give me your vote, and I will uplift you from poverty. But it seems that these infomercials speak too “loud” that the poor voter fails to hear what they say. If only these infomercials were similar to Villar’s itik campaign, there should be no problem. The itik infomercial projects a drift other than a promise: Its message is one of aiding the poor to help them become self-sufficient.
Then again, that assurance of being uplifted from poverty begs the issue. Will the poor voter eventually get what he is being assured of? Will the politician deliver as he promised? After all, politicians are the worst when it comes to the delivery on promises made in the heat of the campaign.
The surveys show that the majority of those who prefer the frontrunners come from the D-E sectors. These are the voters who would not care a whit about what is happening to our politics, who close their eyes and just prefer one who can appeal to them the best, regardless of how rotten (or poor) their choice is.
Those who carefully weigh the qualifications of the candidates, and who are intelligently aware of what is happening around them, are less sympathetic to politicians who project themselves differently from what they really are. For instance, who can believe that a politician ”into the manor born” is sincere and concerned about the welfare of the common man, if he straddles a trisikad in his $300 loafers? Gimmicks like this only make politicians bear false witness against themselves.
A point that is lost on the poor is the astronomical expense for these gimmicks. If politicians are really that sincere in helping the poor, even when it is not the campaign period yet, would it not be better to spread the wealth around by spending for the poor those millions thrown for premature campaigning?
The campaign period still has a long way to go. The electorate, especially the poor, deserve a modicum of respect from politicians. Politicians must bare their true selves; they must make a transparent exposition of their past and present image, not their varnished past and present. That way, when the electorate make their choice on election day they shall consider the sermon and the preacher — the creed and the deed — distinctly and apart, fully aware of what to expect from the kind of politician they voted for.
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