With 105 days left before election day 2022, the anticipation is sometimes too much to bear.
The candidates are like the Boonta Race participants in Star Wars: Episode I, each looking for an edge, no matter the cost.
I am sure, though, some of the candidates will not go too-unreasonably far to secure victory, and will leave the decision squarely with the voters.
Most voters can see who the best candidates are, as well as those who will become spoilers who slow down the progress of anything.
These spoilers are also known as obstacles who will eventually, after some time in office, become nothing more than receptacles for taxpayer money.
We might as well elect trash cans–at least, they have a purpose–to collect trash.
The ones who know they are spoilers will spend their best to win.
And if we let them win, we would have bought ourselves some pretty useless ornaments.
I do not want to sound unfair when I say that it seems like “talk” is the game this campaign period. I know there are some candidates out there who have proven themselves to be honest and trustworthy, with only the welfare of the people in mind.
To go a little above that, there are others who are now in office, and are doing an excellent job.
We know of some who, unfortunately for us here in Dumaguete, are serving in other places, which are now enjoying the fruits of their good leadership.
Here, it is all smoke and mirrors. Some of us have seen beyond the false faí§ade, but many more need to be enlightened.
The people go to the polls to vote for a candidate under the false assumption that if their candidate wins, they will have a leader.
The reality is, politicians are not leaders. They just know as much about leadership as they do about brain surgery, and if they happen to be a neurosurgeon, about spacewalk then.
That is why, it is of the utmost importance for voters to look at each candidate closely so that if there is not one leader among them, they could at least pick the one closest to it.
There was a man who saw his neighbor walking with a fishing rod. As they passed each other, he said to his neighbor, “Are you going fishing?”
The neighbor with the fishing rod answered, “I’m going to the pier to fish.”
The man smiled and said, “Oh, I thought you were going fishing.”
Now, these two men sounded like they were making sense, but they were both deaf.
We cannot have elected officials simply sounding like they make sense. We want them to genuinely make sense. We do not want them to be deaf to our needs. We want them to listen to us speak, and to quickly act upon our demands, like the public servants that they are.
If we do not demand from them what we elected them to be, we forfeit the right to complain about them, and they will bask in the assumption that we approve of them because we voted for them.
And that is a deadly assumption because as we have witnessed in the recent past, politicians will do everything you do not want because to them, your vote gave them the license to do anything “in your name”. Once they are in office, it would be too late for any argument.
So far, we have not heard honest declarations by any of the candidates about:
– Their personal intentions in running for office;
– What makes them believe they can be better public servants than those currently serving;
– Which existing problem in the City they intend to address first, according to urgency;
– Their Plan of Action (POA) regarding the traffic situation in the City;
– Their POA regarding the trash collection system in the City;
– The sincerity of their concern about the substandard utility services in the City (i.e., Metro Dumaguete Water and Noreco 2), and what they intend to do about it — without making an excuse that the City does not own these utilities;
– Their POA with regards to preparing the City and its residents for the next super typhoon, because the next one hitting us is not a question of if, but of when;
– Their position on the 174-hectare reclamation controversy;
– The notion that government should not favor any one religion over another, and that it should not engage in displays of such favoritism in any form, especially not in government buildings. The constituents comprise a wide range of religions. Acknowledge one, acknowledge all;
The fuse has been lit, and the race is on. To these candidates, it will soon be too late to run away from or extinguish, the burning fuse.
When the time comes, they will find themselves on that dance floor, so they better know how to dance.
They cannot waste the people’s votes, and be useless for the next three years, while being paid to be useful. With all their talk now, they better make a difference at the end of their terms. They cannot cling to the way it was, and say they want to change the way it is.
Now is the time for candidates and voters to share a common aspiration–to wise up! A hundred-five and a wake up! Good luck to us all!
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Author’s email: [email protected]
