Why don't politicians tell the truth?

It is because most people enjoy fairy tales, they love fiction rather than documentaries of hard facts and painful realities. Most people are too afraid to confront what is authentic because most of the truth that today's world offers is harsh and even cruel. We are living in dizzying, fast-moving, and volatile times when events are unpredictable and trends are ever disrupted and every turn is complicated. What we see are ambiguous and confusing, and even what we call realities are vague and imprecise.

Honesty is indeed a very lonely word. The world is filled with lies. And many people prefer to wallow in falsehood as defense mechanisms against the assaults of unforgiving truths. Politicians are weavers of fairy tales and they want to mesmerize people most of whom hate the painful truths. These truths often hurt and pose grave and imminent dangers to our health, safety, security and welfare. Not many of us humans can handle the difficult realities that cause us anguish or disappointments. Most of the truths are ugly, others are very dangerous. That is why when politicians tell stories, be they in forms of privilege speeches, a TV or radio interview or a SONA, there are more embellishments of what is really true, more icing than genuine cake, more spices than the real dish.

Politicians want people to feel good. The folks enjoy the beautiful lies, adorned with anecdotes and fictional stories, interjected with wishful imaginings of an ideal world. Most people often prefer the pleasant falsehoods rather than the despicable and harsh truth. That is why it is extremely hazardous on the part of trapos to tell the truth, much more dangerous to reveal the whole truth, and still more threatening to unfold nothing but the truth. Telling the truth, from the perspective of the politicians, can result in making constituents feel uncomfortable, uneasy, or even irritated, provoked or angry. Being truthful may result in losing votes and being beaten by a genius in the art and science of lying.

Fairy tales do not always begin with the proverbial "A long time ago" or "When the world was still a Paradise". Today, politicians begin their own fairy tales with the standard "If I get elected" or "Should I win in this election", then they create fictions of rice costing only ?20 per kilo, of a country blessed with prosperity, led by a UniTeam, where there is food security and the farmers and fisher folks live in comfort and sufficiency. They tell us of a bright future where peace, order, and harmony reign supreme in every nook and cranny, where our neighboring states and nations, small, big or huge, shall respect our territorial integrity. And where no alien can descend on any pig farm, transform it into a POGO hub of prostitution, kidnapping, and torture.

Politicians do not want to tell the truth of millions earning less than a hundred peso a day, living in shacks on top of garbage mountains, and in the banks of stinking esteros and polluted rivers. And they do not want to share the stories of joblessness, homelessness, and hopelessness, and millions in both the urban colonies of squatters and rural villages of destitutes. They do not want to expose the skeleton in the closet that farmers are being dispossessed of their own farmlands by huge plantations owned by aliens and their dummies. They do not want to open the Pandora's box of child prostitutes and mail-order brides, of young boys and girls being sold by their parents to foreign pedophiles and sex predators.

Politicians peddle their lies which the people often buy hook, line, and sinker, and with eyes closed and hearts becoming numb each moment of the masquerade and charade. Oftentimes, the lies become an anesthesia in a cruel and deceitful world, because the truths are virtual cups of hemlock poison.