Machinery and rhetoric

Within the context of politics and elections, the term ‘machinery’ is a neutral term for an unpleasant reality. In his essay, “Moral Appeals and Collective Action in 1953 and 1986 Philippine Elections”, Mark Thompson defines machine politics as: “This is the view that in competitive Philippine elections, votes have gone to the highest bidder. Machine politics is not ideological in character. Voters are mobilized by the distribution of patronage and pork-barrel not by issue-based politics...‘Spoils’ and ‘corruption’ are intrinsically linked to such a form of politics as the machine deals ‘exclusively in particularistic, material rewards’ for achieving electoral success…” The sad reality is, machinery is not only a part of Philippine elections; it is, at the same time, the subversion of democracy.

Distractions from issue-based politics are the use of propaganda, personal attacks, mudslinging and rhetoric. Less than two weeks to go until May 10 and the only ‘substantive’ thing we know about the candidates are their slogans.

Moral appeals seem to be the cause of the day in this campaign season. Each party specifically uses a moral call to action in their sloganeering. Some of the parties have put forth broadly sketched platforms; a few have supplemented their platforms with ‘action plans’; while there are those who have claimed that platforms are unnecessary. We are on record concerning our views on the importance of platforms.

If political machinery is the subversion of democracy, then propaganda and mudslinging is an insult to democracy. On the one hand, you have blatant vote buying via pork barrel and patronage, on the other are attempts to confuse and mislead voters. In both cases, the political parties are not appealing to the intellect of the voter, but to their pocketbooks (and in some cases physical well-being) and emotions. The cure to this should be the media. But we continue to see the hazards of envelopmental journalism.

Back in 1996 we wrote tongue-in-cheek: “The reason why we have elections every six years is because it takes people that long to recover their faith in the cleanliness of the last elections…We hope that the parties come out with their respective programs for the nation. As it is, it is just a choice of political personalities.” Not much has really changed in the intervening 14 years. We have gone through another EDSA, a couple of coup attempts, three or four financial crisis and yet are in the same place.

Also in 1996 we wrote: “Before martial law, there were two parties. The two had their respective platforms. And membership was not limited to people running for office. If you asked the average man on the street, ‘What party do you belong to?’, he would answer one or the other. Today, if you ask people in the office, ‘What party are you affiliated with?’, you will see a blank expression on their faces...” It gets even worse if you ask someone what a party stands for. By this we mean, how they will try to achieve their so-called “platforms” compared to their opponents. Sometimes we wonder if parties themselves even know.

Arguably, this is one of the most important elections in Philippine history. Yet, it remains that voters are still not sure what exactly they are voting for. The rhetoric of the campaign season has devolved into a ‘light vs. dark’ discourse. But only in limited ways have we been presented with policies that will chart the course out of the education, environmental and poverty spiral we find ourselves in. Perhaps, the answer to why issued-based politicking remains missing-in-action is found in the political parties’ continued reliance on antiquated machine politics. They must realize though, that as information sharing becomes widespread, the voting methodologies of the electorate will correspondingly change. 

Voter education, of course, remains the key to dismantling machine politics and eradicating propaganda and personality-based campaigns. In the next two weeks, we hope this, and not propaganda, becomes the basis for election discussion.