work.”
NAMFREL‘s voter education campaign is getting
its share of commentary. The common theme is that it’s partisan, although there
seems to be some confusion which side it’s partisan to. An ABS-CBN news entry I
googled (ABS-CBN Interactive is a joint venture of the Today newspaper and the
ABS-CBN network, the largest in the country) says it’s anti-FPJ (Fernando Poe Jr., leading
presidential candidate and action movie hero). Other feedback says it’s against
the current administration, because the print campaign points out problems like
rising prices of goods, and traffic, that the current administration doesn’t
seem to have solved. There’s nothing on inq7 , the joint venture between the Philippine
Daily Inquirer and the GMA network. (Then again, their search box has never
gotten me anywhere.)
“If you can’t afford it, who has to
pay?
a.
President
b.
Senator
c. Party-List
Representative
d.
Governor
e. None of the
above
You probably already know whom you’re
voting for.
Please make sure you also
understand the job he has to do.”
It’s
work. It’s not personal. And yet, because of the way we’ve been conditioned (or
have conditioned ourselves) to perceive politics and politicos, this call for a
deeper understanding of the positions up for grabs in May (instead of focusing
on the personalities themselves) isn’t taken as such, but rather as an implicit
hit on certain candidates.
It’s just like
surveys. Solita Collas-Monsod says if you don’t like the results, it is
irresponsible to shoot the messenger. It is easy to investigate
the motive, attack the questionnaire, look for who’s related to whom, posit
whose interests are being served. It’s more difficult to keep an open mind and
understand the math. (Of course conspiracy theories have their place in our
hearts, and have sold millions of books for Clive Cussler and his
ilk.)
A wise man I know once told me we
all already come with a set of beliefs, and we go through the world gathering
proof that what we believe is true. His example was, there’s a guy sleeping in
his office cubicle. Two persons peek in on him. A co-worker who dislikes him
thinks, “He’s so lazy.” Another co-worker who likes him thinks, “He’s been
working too much.”
I’ve been thinking
about this so hard my forehead is begging for Botox.