WHILE a devastating earthquake was shaking Myanmar and nearby Thailand last Friday, the country experienced low-intensity political tremors as the official campaign period for local candidates running in the mid-term elections went underway.
On May 12, almost 70 million registered voters will choose 12 senators, 317 district congressmen including party-list solons, 82 governors and 82 vice governors, 800 Sangguniang Panlalawigan members, 1,642 city and municipal mayors, another 1,642 city and municipal vice mayors, and 13,638 city and municipal councilors.
The local campaign season is expected to heat up this April, the same month Catholics around the world will observe the Holy Week.
With the Lenten season as backdrop, Filipinos will see this year’s elections as an opportunity to hope for better leaders, or just a rewind of another raft of broken promises.
‘But to ordinary Juan dela Cruz, all GDP numbers are abstract and distant if they can’t feel, smell and see it.’
The jaded ones will regard elections as a state-sanctioned ruse for politicians to secure for themselves a blank check to ransack state coffers and enrich themselves more.
Looking at it from an economic lens, the hope that an election brings ties in on how such a political exercise will impact the lives of ordinary people.
Historically, elections have a way of boosting the economy from cash spent on campaign ads, PR firms, elections materials, volunteers’ payroll, hotels, air and land transportation, food and other services like troll farms.
But while our state financial managers often hail elections as economic boosters, some analysts do not see this entirely happening this May. An economist from the Ateneo de Manila University even thinks that the role played by elections in boosting the economy has lost its luster.
From the official economic growth target of 6 to 8 percent as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP), the projection is that this year’s GDP will be slightly lower at 5.9 percent.
This is considered weak for an election year because the economy has been consistently reaping election dividends, as shown by its 6.8 percent GDP finish in 2013 and the 6.1 percent economic expansion in 2019, which were all mid-term election years.
Presidential elections were also GDP boosters, with 7.6 percent economic growth in 2022, 7.1 percent in 2016, and 7.3 percent GDP posted in 2010.
A below-target economic growth will further cement the emerging consensus that elections are no longer a reliable “partner in progress.”
But to ordinary Juan dela Cruz, all GDP numbers are abstract and distant if they can’t feel, smell and see it.
Filipinos measure their economy’s health by cheap prices of goods and services, including lower utility bills. Families being able to dine out and their members not getting sick are considered added economic bonus.
What remains certain amidst the election hoopla is that Filipinos should brace for a long and extended Lenten period that could last up to three years, until our hopes are fired up again by the next scheduled elections.
