Illicit marriage between popularity and politics

As the deadline for the filing of Certificate of Candidacy (COC) is closing in, the Philippines Commission on Elections (Comelec) has been transformed into a
chaotic arena where many celebrities scamper to run for public office. As if they are the ones who could alleviate the sad plights of the poor from poverty.

Now, it is up to the people as to whether to vote for them or not. But can the popularity of these celebrities really push them to the edge of victory? This is a big question that could be gauged once the national elections in May 2012 come to reality.

In Metro Manila alone and some cities in the suburbs like the Calabarzon area, scions of political kingpins have been launched into the political limelight, thinking that they are the cream of the crop whose extra political talents could solve the economic and social problems of their constituents.

How come all this development is coming into the picture? Why the rush to join the political bandwagon when they are still young enough to rake in more money from their stardom? And I don't think that being a politician would give them more financial resources compared to being in the entertainment industry where huge offers will be more than enough to sustain their whims and caprices in life.

I have only one answer. If I'm not mistaken, the first thing that they will tell you if you ask them they run for public office is that they wanted to help the poor people.

Although they may not tell us the second reason, I guess it would be to be for financial stability and power, which are not have by being a celebrity. If you try to make a cursory look at their qualifications, you will notice that they barely set foot in college. What do the public expect from these kind of politicians? For me, there's nothing but their being popular to the movie-goers.

For example, right now the Philippine Congress is a nest-bed for lawmakers who are either close relatives or celebrities. You can see that during deliberations on certain important bills, they could barely engage others in fierce debates due to their lack of the knowledge to argue on certain political issues that are discussed in the plenary sessions.

However, these shortcomings are easily overcome. Normally, what they do is to hire lawyers and other professionals to act as their alter egos in the performance of their duties as public officials. In the course of running the public office, there are dangers that lurk ahead along the way. When a certain public official is not well-rounded on political, economic and social issues, sometimes he is caught flat-footed during official discussions and argumentations. Why? Because their backgrounds are not suited to modern politics.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Opening of public lands for agri-developments

Image
For many decades, vast tracts of forest lands are damaged across the Philippines. These are either the handiwork of nature like soil erosions, landslides, tremors or they're simply man-made due to humans' greed for immediate cash if only to survive. By all means, those who are within the proximity of the forests are free to do whatever they thought was best for them to survive or earn fast cash.  Notably, the most common practice that upland dwellers do is the cutting of firewood, slash-and-burn farming to plant crops even if these activities run counter to established forestry regulations that forbid them from doing these activities without permission from the authorities. Without a land of their own, they have to do it anyway. While some armed groups would simply engage themselves in illegal logging activities for profits. Forestry reports said that they even encroach on other's logging concessions to cut trees for sale to interested buyers. When I was working with the Mi
Read more

China is to blame for the pandemic spread

Image
Had the Chinese government taken the initiative or done enough to immediately contain the novel Coronavirus from spreading waywardly into other areas, this pandemic wouldn't have gone too far to pester other countries like Italy, the United States and the Philippines whose governments had declared a lockdowns thus causing extreme fears among the people, not to mention the derailments of some economies worldwide. But the provincial government, where Wuhan is an integral part of, acted too late to lockdown the place. The local government in Wuhan should have prevented residents from getting out, especially those who were infected by the virus. Sorry to say this, but the Wuhan government officials were lackadaisical in their approach to the health dilemma, thinking that the problem was just an ordinary matter which didn't require much attention. Until the problem got worse resulting to some deaths in the area had they known of Covid-19's serious impacts on the health of innoce
Read more