Political Dynasties and Corruption of Power

From What the eyes cannot see

There is this show called Investigative Documentaries by Malou Mangahas on GMA News TV about the political dynasties and corruption of power in the Philippines. I honestly did not get the chance to watch the whole set as I only saw the last 20 minutes of it but I can say, I saw what I needed to see. Malou Mangahas and the political analysts that she interviewed easily worded my thoughts about politics and corruption in the Philippines to a T. There were two points that have really come across, that to me is really the root cause of the relentless problems we are facing right now both in our economic competitiveness and our national security.

The root causes of our problems are two-pronged of the same shit – POLITICAL DYNASTIES and LACK OF EDUCATION. Amidst the entire conundrum, it is in these two where poverty, terrorism, criminality, larger gaps between the rich and the poor, lack of national patriotism and pride, hopelessness and the absence of economic attractiveness stems from.

In the documentary, it said that there are 150+ political classes all throughout the 12 regions of the Philippines, this leaves us with more than 10 political clans per region. With a country that has barely 130 cities, this is a big problem. The concept of competitiveness requires a myriad of options to choose from – if A does not work, maybe B will or C or D and so on. It is in the competitive nature of both our local and national politicians that we should be basing our electoral votes from. But how come we still continue to vote for the same people who stole our tax money over and over again? The Amaptuan’s still won (if I am not mistaken) 19 local government positions in Maguindanao during the recent elections even after they have massacred 58 people – two years ago to this month. How can the people of Maguindanao still have this patronage over this clan when they even created 15 additional municipalities in their locality just so they can request for more money through the IRA? Yet when the GMA News team went to these municipalities, they all looked like ghost towns? Isn’t corruption very apparent to these people?

One political analyst said that unless we EDUCATE these people in letting them understand that the Ampatuans did not spend for the education, public infrastructure/services, security and etc for the people in Maguindanao, but rather, these were government monetary allocations for the people of Maguindanao in the first place – only then will they realize that they have been fooled again and again.

In addition to the lack of education in this country, the corrupt political leaders also kept the Philippines’ population for the self-confessed-poor-and-hungry to 30%. Because as part of these corrupt leader’s formula to stay in power is to psychologically have the poor depend on them for their most basic needs. “Unless we address poverty, educating the masses on choosing the correct political leaders will never materialize.” said one political analyst, “Because it is hard to preach to an empty stomach.”

This explains why we still chose political leaders that have the same last names – look at the house of senate and count the dynasties you see in there. How about the house of Congress? Your mayoralty candidates who are these names that are butting heads? Don’t they belong to very well know political dynasties? Now that we have seen what these political dynasties can do to us, why not choose for another candidate to run our government with fresh eyes?

But personally, I think there is still hope for things to change for the better even with the current “stalemate”. It is our job and responsibility as citizens who have a better understanding about these issues to spread the word. We should not grow tired of watching the news and take part in the change that we want to see. We should throw away our concept of “Sa balita, puro pulitika na naman, laging nag aaway, wala na talagang pag-asa ang Pilipinas.” This mindset will only aggravate our situation, we need to start acting as intellectuals and take part in the changes that we can help influence.