The heat is on.
And we’re not just talking about the start of the summer season.
The campaign for local positions start this week, on March 25.
While the campaign for the national elections, which started last February 8, have proven to be an all-out battle between two vice-presidential contenders in the 2016 elections — a son of a dictator and a woman who has performed beyond all expectations during the Covid-19 pandemic — have been “heating up” in Laguna province, expect the race for local elections to become much, much, hotter.
Local elections have tended to be more lively and more personal here in Laguna province, considered as one of the country’s most “vote-rich” areas.
And why not? We’re talking about the direct impact of the services — or the lack thereof —of our local government officials, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Political analysts say while they do not expect Laguna province to be a hotspot for election-related violence in this year’s elections, the battle could become as “dirty” as ever.
Candidates are now gearing up into a mudfest of lies, counter-lies, refutations and counter-refutations.
We’re not surprised by this. Even before “fake news” became a household word, politics in our province has already been marred by black propaganda, sometimes in the form of white paper, fly-by-night newspapers containing nothing but aspersions against candidates.
This year, fake news has moved to social media, with online trolls and spurious webpages engaging in a sort of “psychological war” to sway voters’ opinions.
This election, analysts have said countless times in the past, is not just a gauge of how voters gauge local officials’ response to the pandemic but also a harbinger of how our officials will lead us out of its socio-economic impacts for the next two years.
These should be critical factors voters should be looking for as they prepare their lists of whom they will choose to be their next leaders on May 9.