The devil we know

After the Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced winners in the Senate and many local races, a prominent lawyer was overheard vowing to push for legislation that would limit suffrage only to taxpayers.

This, the lawyer said, would leave voting to those with a personal financial stake in nation-building, which theoretically would drastically lower the threshold for public tolerance of corrupt and incompetent buffoons who seek public office mainly for the fund of it.

A lawyer-congressman had in fact voiced the same proposal a few years ago, amid hand-wringing over the landslide victory of Joseph Estrada in the 1998 presidential race. Like proposals to tax assets of religious groups, regulate campaign finance or limit political dynasties, the proposal was regarded as a joke and it died a natural death.

Today the proposal is being revived, even if only in exasperation, as dynasties are perpetuated, as the same useless buffoons top the Senate race, and pardoned plunderer Erap ranks second in the presidential election.

Voters made automation a success and rejected almost everyone touched by the deadly kiss of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, from the presidential race to the local contests in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Even the combined star power of Manny Pacquiao, Dolphy and Willie Revillame could not save Sen. Manny Villar from the “Villaroyo” debacle.

It was like hearing Corazon Aquino mouthing the anti-Marcos opposition slogan, “tama na, sobra na, palitan na” – enough, this is too much, it’s time for change – during the campaign for the 1986 snap presidential election.

But in many other races, including the Senate, voters went for the familiar.

Even in the presidential race, Sen. Benigno Aquino III was not the only candidate promising to crack down on corruption and go after GMA, and he was not the only candidate untouched by corruption scandals. But for the average voter, a candidate like environmentalist Nicanor Perlas - beholden to no major political party or big business interests, divorced and pro-gay marriage - represented too radical a change.

In other races, voters seem to have picked the devil they know to unknown candidates with the potential to be worse.

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Were voters too lazy to know the candidates? Perhaps there were simply too many aspirants. There were 62 candidates for 12 Senate seats, and 187 groups vied for party-list representation.

Those who fought to have the gay rights group Ang Ladlad accredited in the party list acknowledge that they failed to organize nationwide and lacked the resources to make Filipino gay voters aware of their group. Ang Ladlad looks unlikely to make it to the 15th Congress.

In the Senate and House races, many men and women who are far more competent than the winners have been rejected. But competence is rarely an issue in Philippine elections, and it will be even more so when the nine and a half long years under GMA are finally over. Like the late Ferdinand Marcos, GMA has given competence a bad name. Galing at talino - competence and brains - the slogan of her official candidate, are seen as components of a criminal mind.

This is one of the explanations I can think of for the victory of many entertainment personalities in both national and local races, even if they are considered intellectual lightweights – apart from their obvious edge over their rivals in terms of name recall.

The entertainers, seen in the past as the only way to break the stranglehold of political dynasties, lost their appeal to voters in the 2004 and 2007 races, possibly because of lingering disappointment over the botched performance of Erap as president.

But Erap has been rehabilitated, thanks in large part to the abuses of the current administration. The crime for which Erap was convicted and pardoned pales in comparison with those being imputed on the Arroyo administration.

Like the Marcoses, President Arroyo and her relatives continue to enjoy the support of voters in their bailiwicks. Those congressional districts were lavished with presidential attention in the past years. With an anti-Arroyo president soon to control the purse strings in the 15th Congress, we don’t know how long that support will last.

We pay a lot of attention to those who aspire for the presidency, and rightly so, considering the powers of the office under our system. We have also learned to pay attention to the aspirants for vice president, remembering the political turbulence in 2001 and 2005.

Soon we should also start paying more attention to our choices for the two chambers of Congress.

Apart from making sure we don’t waste public funds on non-performers, on shameless profligacy and outright thievery, we must remember the role played by the legislature in governance.

The president, for all the powers of the office, needs the cooperation of Congress in exercising fiscal discipline, in prioritizing development projects, in front-loading programs to fight poverty and illiteracy.

The legislature can compel transparency in the executive – something the 14th Congress has failed to do. Its oversight functions should promote good governance.

Charter change – whether an amendment or revision – may finally push through in the 15th Congress.

Now look at some of the devils we know who have just been given the mandate to perform all these tasks. Look at them and shudder.