With the midterm elections less than two months away, Filipinos have plenty of time to consider the platforms and programs of candidates for both national and local positions.
Even today, some voters are now taking to social media to put forward the “ideal” qualities of the candidates they are choosing.
And what struck me is that a few seem to have discarded candidates who are ostensibly not on the side of either the Marcoses and the Dutertes because of some differences in key issues, for example, the issue of LGBTQIA+ rights.
What I have noticed in the past few elections is that some voters have tried (in vain) to search for what is, for them, the “perfect” candidate: a candidate that will agree with all their principles, beliefs and even biases.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I learned the hard way that there is no such thing as a “perfect” candidate.
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One particular candidate I’m talking about is the late Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, whom I have admired for her no-nonsense style of politics and law (that, unfortunately, some have perceived as madness, but that’s another story).
Her alliance with President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. was the one thing I had held against her in 2016. But even I could forgive her for that gaffe, as she’s clearly not the choice of a people who are hungry for “instant change” – even though that kind of change, as we have seen years and years later, only worsened the country’s socio-political landscape (again, that’s another story) and she desperately needed to boost her ratings. Not to mention that she was fighting her own battle against cancer, a battle that she would lose later that year.
Nor was I a fanatic supporter of former President Noynoy Aquino – I disliked him, even – but looking back, I could now see that his one redeeming quality is that he was never a populist.
Aquino’s steadfastness, persistence (one could even say stubbornness) in pursuing the Daang Matuwid, even though he knew he would create enemies from all fronts, was borne out of a genuine belief that his policies will eventually lead to progress. He didn’t care if his policies are unpopular, because he believed this is the path the country SHOULD take – a trait that too many politicians nowadays severely lack.
-o0o-
If we are hell-bent on finding the “fairy-tale” candidate that we had aspired for, I’m sorry to say this, but we’ll only probably end up boycotting the elections in the end.
The truth is that all candidates – even those we liked or admired – have their own positive and negative sides. That’s life, you know: all of us have our own strengths and weakness, and our candidates have them too.
Instead of finding the “perfect” candidate, why don’t we look at whether who can advance the interests of the ordinary Filipinos the most? And if there are some policies or ideals that we disagree of with them, why don’t we weigh those disagreements against the larger picture – of who among them are the ones who can push for genuine change?
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