There’s a mini-revolution taking place over at the group blog FilipinoVoices. A number of bloggers and commenters there are engaged in an effort to change the way Filipinos evaluate political candidates.
Much credit goes to the blogger known as BenignO who came up with the catchphrase “Platform, plez!” which will serve as a reminder to all candidates to stop inundating the electorate with motherhood statements, empty promises and all other types of crap. As suggested, bloggers who choose to write about the candidates and their failure to provide any specific platform should just append the phrase to their posts.
Another blogger BongV came out with a similarly commendable follow up. In his post titled “Benchmarking the Presidentials” he attempts to provide a simple way of evaluating the so-called presidentiables. Using tables, BongV gives us an overview of key issues and where some of these presidentiables stand. The data provided by BongV is far from comprehensive and complete but, as I noted, it’s better than nothing and it’s a good start. I’m hoping he will come up with donwloadable pdf versions of his tables. All voters should have their copies.
Related to this, PinoyBuzz pointed out to me that maybe some candidates are deliberately making their political ads as revolting as possible to attract the masa crowd. I agree with his view. It has become quite obvious that many politicians and their media handlers are guided by the public relations notion that “bad publicity is still publicity.” (Come to think of it Former President Joseph Estrada did get himself elected thanks in part to his Eraptions, which as I recall was the brainchild of publicist Reli German.)
Well, I think it’s about time we wisen up to this cheap gimmickry. I had previously recommended villifying any and all silly political ads. I realize now that doing that will just give these stupid political ads more mileage.
In Smoke.ph, blogger Rom wrote a post in which she basically calls on political bloggers to put a stop to all the shallow punditry.
She writes:
And pundits – both on-line and in the mainstream – continuously feed the egos of these wannabees by devoting column-inches and blog posts to their merest utterances. But more than just feeding egos, this predilection to writing up every little off-the-cuff remark, every bluster, and every knee-jerk reaction of these aspirants for the presidency (not presidentiables, mind you, because in the strictest sense of even that made-up word, they are not presidentiable) adds the patina of legitimacy to what would otherwise be dismissed as plain and simple chicanery.
And…
The pundits are no help. When was the last time you read an article that tried to delve deeply into what a Roxas presidency would do for the country? Or an Escudero presidency? All you can read nowadays trivialize the presidency into nothing more than a prize to be won, hence the proliferation of attempts at pseudo-thinktankish analyses of who will most likely win. All that does is engender the belief that it is better to pick the winningest candidate than to support the one that will do the best job.
I’m hoping these ‘calls’ for a more educated screening and selection of political candidates will gain steam.
Candidates take note.
Platform, plez!
Oh, those pundits…
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lpgd Reply:
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:42 am
have to rein in the inner pundit
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“Related to this, PinoyBuzz pointed out to me that maybe some candidates are deliberately making their political ads as revolting as possible to attract the masa crowd.”
Actually it’s a PR tactic that has little to do with making the ad revolting. To its target audience it isn’t revolting; it is, to them, convincing (which is disturbing to us who react negatively to these ads).
Notice the common denominator between the Villar and Roxas ads: they convey the message “I am one among the poor, not one among the elite who don’t care about you.” And look how they repetitively* express that message in each single different “episode” of Villar’s and Roxas’s ads. Ironic and rather stupid to you and me, as it is tantamount to serving shit but calling it peanut butter; but these presidential hopefuls were told by their own PR teams that they don’t want to look out-of-touch with the needs of the masses by appearing elitist, unattainably affluent, dynastic, and an agent of the status quo (which, to the dissident in everyone, means the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and the power stays with whoever are in power now). In the absence of actual platform, people are left to make premature conclusions for themselves – usually, that if, say, Juan likes Villar, he’ll assume Villar’s platform is change. Ah, the vagueness of it all. But really, the laziness in Pinoy thinking tends to come down to “pwede na ‘to,” despite not really knowing what change is even promised. Sounds familiar, huh? This is where democracy is frustrating, because who knows how many among us are just dartboard voters? Too many, I suppose. Far too many.
*Repetition is key in advertising and marketing in general, so they’re really pounding away and spending the most. Sad because life in the Philippines has taught us that if you repeat a lie enough times, the lie, at some point, becomes accepted as truth. Politicians have reduced this to an art.
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