HOTSPOT
Did you know that there were 18,087 positions at stake in the 2022 elections? Give or take a few positions whose terms of office exceed three years, this would be roughly the same number of positions to be contested in 2025.
I again looked for this number after I saw a widely-shared social media post containing 10 prospective Senate candidates for the next elections. At first, I thought that was some strategic thinking, but I later contemplated that it could be nothing more than another political wet dream of election amateurs.
For if we learned something in the last elections, some of the lessons would be: the necessity of having a political party or movement; people should have more than a voluntary role in decision-making from picking candidates to determining the platform; and creating and fielding candidates for all positions.
From a strictly political or electoral point of view, these three things were absent or lacking in the Opposition side. Because there was no party, there’s no clear structure or organization behind the campaign. Voluntarism is good but that also meant that people have no direct say in the campaign. Finally, the lack of candidates practically meant losing thousands of positions from the get-go.
From a substantive political point of view, having these three things would have meant a more potent campaign. Voters would have been given a national and local alternative slate that’s prepared to fight and to win. But if you just had presidential and vice presidential candidates, and not even a full senatorial slate, and nothing to offer for Congress and local positions, that’s a problem any way you look at it. Some would even argue that that’s a disservice to the public, because it gives a false impression that change can come even without changemaking candidates in other posts from Congress to the capitols, municipios, and city halls.
Whether the Opposition needs a party or a movement, I do not know. What we could agree on is that there should be an organized, disciplined, and systematic manner to create, identify, develop, test and field roughly 18,000 outstanding, winnable, patriotic and progressive candidates in the next elections. That manner would be more potent is people would be directly involved not just as volunteers, but as people with a direct stake and say. Many, most or all of these candidates must come from these people invested in the cause.
But even as we discuss 2025, there’s the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections later this year. Barangays are the most basic unit of governance in the country. On paper, it is supposedly a non-partisan affair. But we know that local and national politicians tip the scales in these races, for they know the key role of barangay officials in local and national races. Many local and even some national officials also started in the barangays and SKs.
People interested in politics and public service should consider contesting the barangay and SK elections. This could be a way of testing and showing the validity or potency of political beliefs in terms of delivering frontline services to our own neighborhoods. Whether it is basic healthcare, service to seniors and PWDs, sports promotion, neighborhood safety and security, or resolving conflicts, the first steps happen in our barangays.
If one belongs to a barangay whose chair or kagawads serve only those who voted for them, or are flagrantly incompetent, this could be an opportunity for some changemaking. If one belongs to an SK that you think should not merely hold sportsfests or make signages, and do more like mental health campaigns, basic literacy and numeracy, first aid trainings, and even historical, social and political education, why not run and offer to lead such efforts?
We now have 42,047 barangays, each with a chair and six kagawads, plus an SK chair and six SK kagawads. That’s 588,658 leaders set to be reelected or replaced. We could only hope good ones would be reelected or replace the bad ones.
But whether at national, local or barangay level, we could agree that preparation, organization, funding, manpower, and platforms are needed. Lessons too from past elections. The trouble begins not when we see the seemingly “bad” election results. The trouble begins when we think somewhere, somehow, there would be superheroes – not us or anyone of us – coming out of the blue to save our nation, province, town, city or barangay.