By Ade S. Fajardo
Regardless of where you are in the Philippines, people assess winnability at the polls through a candidate’s vaunted political machinery.
In turn, with very few exceptions, machinery is measured by how much money a candidate is willing and able to spend in the exercise.
A candidate armed only with smarts and good intentions is readily dismissed as unwinnable.
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The effect is not a mere ripple.
Local chieftains like barangay officials and municipal mayors would gravitate towards candidates with “machinery,” leaving principled candidates in the dust and without the ground support that their leadership brings.
The formula is simple. These chieftains are expected by their followers and constituents to spread the sunshine every election cycle. Otherwise, their own political survival might be in jeopardy.
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Vote-buying has become such a tradition that “election proceeds” are factored in the family budget, at least for the non-working election day.
Candidates are treated the same. Everyone is predicted to be corrupt while in office anyway — might as well vote for one who brought food to the table on election day.
The winners protect their incumbency by raking in as much as they can while in office, more than enough for the next election season.
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Corruption at the polls has led to corruption in public office.
It has also led to dynasties, to confine political and economic power in the family. Some families have even exported their dynasties to places other than their traditional bailiwicks.
It has also led to the recent phenomenon of politico-contractors. Windfall from government contracts has generated sufficient funds to lubricate the machinery of contractors who have suddenly found the urge to combine money with political power.
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Over the decades, despite the enactment of very strict procurement laws, bid rigging and other combinations in restraint of trade have concentrated proceeds from government contracts in the hands of a few favored contractors.
Brice Hernandez, a young engineer in Bulacan’s 1st Engineering District, has testified that almost all biddings are fixed to favor contractors who have made advance payments on projects already identified with funders from either house of Congress.
This is the corrupt system that has made young engineers in search of lucrative employment flock to the Department of Public Works and Highways.
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It is under this system that politico-contractors have thrived.
Sarah Discaya had attempted to wrest the Pasig mayoralty from Vico Sotto but unfortunately failed.
No one can blame former Secretary Babes Singson for expressing displeasure over any intended favored status for the Discaya couple. They represent what is wrong with the corrupt system.
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Now we gnash our teeth over infrastructure corruption that found its way to our consciousness only through the ostentation of public servants who get government wages.
But who truly is to blame when the problem is entirely political? The senators and congressmen who are suspected of having made corrupt arrangements with contractors and engineers have popular mandates from their respective constituencies.
Sadly, the voters are to blame./WDJ