‘How far will my friends go, they who tell me that this is a battle between good and evil?’
SOME 18 years ago, a law school classmate of mine stood on the podium of the House of Representatives to preside over the canvass of election returns for President of the Philippines.
It was a critical moment: opposition figures were alleging that many of those returns, especially those from certain provinces in Mindanao, were dubious: the total number of votes cast did not match and sometimes even exceeded the total number of voters; some of the signatures of election poll watchers looked suspiciously the same, as did the thumb marks; some precincts showed the winning candidate getting all the votes cast while none of the rivals got any; and so on and so forth. By posing objections to the canvassing of the returns the opposition figures were trying to get them examined so that the truth behind the alleged cheating could be brought to light.
But the presiding officer was unmoved and was efficient in carrying out his duties. All he would say to everyone objection was “Noted,” accompanied by a banging of the gavel, the challenged returns were accepted and included on the tally.
Many believe to this day that Fernando Poe Jr. won the elections of 2004, yet his defeat was certified by Sen. Francis Pangilinan who, for a while, became known as “Mr. Noted.”
Pangilinan is an able legislator and was a good student leader at UP — and was someone I was certain was going to be a close-to-ideal candidate for president given his academic background, his persona and yes, his popular wife — but somehow he never truly recovered in stature after his role in the midnight proclamation of Gloria Arroyo in 2004.
Today Sen. Pangilinan — who gets my vote — is running mate to Vice President Leni Robredo. Their campaign has been hailed as one which would topple four political dynasties in one blow: the Marcoses, the Estrada, the Arroyos and the Dutertes. No one sees any irony here, at least no one from the Yellow-Pink side of the political divide in the Philippines; that elements of the Robredo-Pangilinan campaign helped prop up at least one if not two of those four dynasties is of no moment, or is forgivable. It’s the other side that cannot be forgiven, because it’s the side of evil.
That’s what I see often these days as the campaign comes down to the final two weeks: one camp being vilified as the camp of evil by one side that claims to be the camp of good.
To some extent we can forgive the passions of people that lead them to frame the elections in this manner, but at the same time we cannot worry about the implications of this framing and how it exemplifies the type of politics the world over: highly passionate, highly partisan, highly intolerant.
No wonder some kids are taking to tampering with the smartphones and tablets of their parents who tune in to vlogs on the other side of the political spectrum; the kids feel that by doing this they’re doing their parents a favor and saving them from falling into the clutches of the “dark side.”
Big Brother is alive and well, my friends.
Years ago, leaders characterized their opponents as evil and did what they could to exterminate them. Books were confiscated and burned; civic organizations were dissolved; critical media closed, and people were incarcerated and even killed. Pol Pot did it. Mao did it. Stalin did it. Hitler did it. Heck, even the Popes did it.
You’re up against evil, remember?
How far will my friends go, they who tell me that this is a battle between good and evil?
Then again maybe I should just give them a one-word response: “Noted.”
