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| Photo from Rappler.com |
The latest survey released by Social Weather Stations, one of the more respected research institutions in the Philippines, shows that if a Presidential Election were held today (or well, a month ago if we want to be more exact), then Ferdinand "Bong Bong" Marcos, Jr. ("BBM" to friend and foe alike) would easily win, with 47% of the national vote. Granted, there is absolutely no guarantee that this trend can and will be sustained until the actual elections come May of 2022. But the fact remains, undeniable and unquestionable, that at the time of the survey, roughly half the country would vote for him to be President. This, in itself, is already a bit of mystery. It is a mystery because according to official history, his family, led by his father Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986, was driven from power and out of the country by an uprising of the "people" (suggesting a vast majority of the nation's citizens). By extension it is also strongly implied that his family is the most evil in Philippine history, its biggest thieves, its most horrible citizens, the root cause of all the nation's suffering, and yet here we are, with roughly half the "people" now ready to make him President.
Contrary to the insistence of some sectors that his popularity can be explained by a savvy (and expensive) use of social media (doubtless true) to expose our young to a sort of creeping historical revisionism, it has also been independently established that he has a base with the 60-and-older demographic. (See this 2016 piece from Rappler.com, when he ran for VP and garnered 14M votes in a losing cause.) - and this is an even bigger mystery, because one would think that the 60-and-older generation, having actually lived through BBM's father's rule, would have some level of immunity versus the oft-mentioned historical revisionism. My personal experience jibes with this phenomena - amongst friends and acquaintances who are from households of mixed political colors, it is often one of the elder members of the family, i.e. the grandfather or grandmother who experienced life before and after the 1986 EDSA "People Power" Revolution, who is the BBM supporter.
I sat down to thresh out my thoughts on explaining this mystery, why Filipinos who support BBM might feel the way they do. I make no claim that they are right, and no claim that they are wrong. I pass no judgement on whether their feelings are justified or not. Mine is only to think of possible reasons for this glaring incongruence that I see.
Have you done any better?
I suspect that some of the support for BBM arises from the fact that some voters have grown uncomfortable with the narrative arising from the events of 1986. We had this president, who did both good and bad, and we demonized him together with his family. We judged them and shamed them, and claimed that if not for them, the Philippines ought to be a land of milk and honey. Perhaps they deserved it, because it was undoubtedly true that they hung on to power for too long. But even assuming that they did, now, almost 40 years later, has all the verbal umbrage actually produced a better life for the ordinary Filipino? The politicians who speak the loudest, repeat the accusations most often, they've had their chance to govern, but has corruption been solved, much less eliminated? Are we any closer to having quality education and a decent life for all? Is social justice anywhere in sight? Again, I am not here to argue. I am here to put forth what may be on the mind of the average BBM supporter, and thus why they feel the way they do - what incentive do they have to vote for the disente, the pure, the prayerful, the supposedly incorruptible? They have voted such people into power before over the last thirty-some years, but life has remained the same for most of them.. If no one is now stealing all the vast amounts we say the Marcoses stole during their 20 years in power, then this country ought to be rich by now, right? But well..
Democracy, you say?
We say we restored democracy in 1986, and in the next breath say our opponent shouldn't be allowed to win. In short lahat pwedeng tumakbo, pero ako lang ang karapat-dapat manalo. Perhaps there is a bit of irony there. Again, we are not here to argue the validity of this claim of irony, in fact one might argue that a stand should always be made against evil by good, but at the very least this raises the question of who is to be the final judge of good and evil? And if anyone amongst us is indeed the representation of good, why have a democracy to begin with? Shouldn't this shining light of goodness be made to govern us forever? This contradiction does bother me, and I believe it bothers others, even if they are unable to articulate their feelings exactly.
Who is more Feelingero / Feelingera?
I deliberately used the Filipino slang for "conceited". The mere fact that a Filipino slang word exists for such an attribute - perhaps this reveals that the Filipino psyche dislikes feelingeros and feelingeras. When a candidate projects that he/she is righteous enough to pass moral judgment on his/her opponents, perhaps some Filipinos recoil at that...
We are all Sons and Daughters
Lastly I suspect that the very act of running, the very act of putting himself out there, already wins BBM votes. We say his family has amassed vast amounts of ill-gotten wealth. I personally believe this to be true; but in an unexpected way it also produces a strange kind of respect for what he is now doing. He does not have to do this. He can just sit back and live out his days in materialistic splendor, and yet he chose to be in public life, knowing the amount of ammunition that can and will be used against him. I, personally, know I would not have the constitution for that kind of onslaught. He does, he has. And if he is doing this to redeem their family name and his father's legacy, all the more, who among us doesn't have some appreciation for that? In the end, we are all sons and daughters. Perhaps voters feel this, even if they are totally unaware of the emotions they are experiencing.
Finally, the one thing I wanted to take away from this is that there are important life lessons here - too many to fully explore, but I'd like to raise, briefly, two here:
As a society we should consider that the developments we see today are the consequences of non-inclusive development. The notion of the Marcos years being some kind of "Golden Age" is often pooh-poohed to be propaganda from the current Marcos myth-making social media machine, but I think it would be wise for us to consider the possibility that while it might not be true for us, it might be true for certain sectors. If the years after EDSA have been good to us, it might not necessarily have been good to others, and this may be why we see this wave of rejection of the ideals that EDSA supposedly represents. More succinctly, there are consequences when we think only of ourselves, and do nothing to lift the members of the human village to which we belong.
Lastly, we ought to at least realize this: It is tremendously easy to judge and to judge simplistically, especially if we have not been exposed to the same kind of temptations and pitfalls. While it is always important to take a stand against evil, let us also be watchful that we view things through the prism of our own weaknesses and frailties.