Ifs, maybes, and running for office

No, I’m not thinking of running for office this coming 2022 elections. I am rather referring to those who will be filing their certificates of candidacy between October 1 and 8.

I have received invitations before to run for public office in my hometown north of the city, but I declined each time. I am not avoiding public service like it’s none of my business or that it’s solely the business of seasoned political players. I have had my share of political battles as a supporter or even a part of the campaign team of a few politicians whose values and direction are aligned with mine.

But to be frank, those prodding me to run for public office mainly on my own personal resources are inadvertently telling me to steal from public coffers when I am already in office; or perhaps, to put it mildly, to spend my government salary up to the last centavo as dole out for my poor constituents. They are asking me to use my government position as a leverage for my own personal interest and to maintain my hold on power. They are setting me up to become a corrupt official.

I am 45 years old, a lawyer with a master’s degree from a university abroad and a long history of community service and advocacy. At this rate, I should be running for public office already, or vie for a public position under the auspices of some political patron.

Senator and boxing legend Manny Pacquiao is 42; Mayor Sara Duterte, 43; Mayor Isko Moreno, 46. I am, of course, out of their league. But I am not running for president, for goodness’ sake. The highest offer I got so far was to run for vice mayor of a fourth-class municipality.

Yet why I am still not vying for public office?

Maybe sooner or later I will. For now, I am content with contributing time and money for the campaign of leaders whom I have chosen to support. I have already said before that we should support our preferred politicians by contributing concretely to their campaign. It should not be the other way around where we expect our politicians to fund their own campaign while we try to catch the crumbs off the sidelines of a campaign awash with cash from sources you wouldn’t want to know.

Still we know that no bright politician ever spends personal funds for his own campaign. He builds party machinery from the money of tycoons with vested interests. He orders his bagman to build an election war fund from protection money from businesses and “SOP contributions” from contractors.

Maybe our bright politician decides to fall into the hands of foreign state actors. The latter have been documented in various reports and studies to have set up disinformation networks on YouTube and Facebook to tip the scales during elections to their favored candidates. Yes I’m talking about the troll farms based in Russia and China which have local franchises in the US, Latin America, the Philippines, and the rest of Asia.

Maybe I am too pessimistic. There are indeed, for instance, entrepreneurs who support politicians solely because they want good governance. Good governance is good for the economy and in turn good for business.

By and large, however, we still have a passive electorate and weak grassroots involvement in our political system. And those things I mentioned earlier, they are the result of our weak party system. Ego and desire for power, not ideological discipline, run our mainstream political parties. It is what’s corrupting our politicians and our elections.

In the words of a university professor I met in Kaohsiung two years ago, that’s not how a city or a country builds itself to become strong and resilient. We were touring his city when he explained how its leaders and people transformed their city from a once industrial filth into a high-tech, sustainable and livable city in southern Taiwan. He mentioned about a successful and sustained campaign to convince people not to sell their votes and likewise to support politicians who stand for justice and fair play.

Maybe the pandemic has made us finally see the importance of justice and fair play. Maybe the deaths of people we know and the sufferings of countless others because of COVID-19 will trigger a shift from public apathy to public scrutiny of the political gamesmanship of pretenders desiring the seat in Malacañang. Maybe.