Blind idolatry and the irrational elites
By Antonio P. Contreras
October 9, 2014 3:22pm
GMA News Online, Opinion, Blog
He will still vote for Binay, despite all the things that are being said about him.
This is what this ordinary guy told me one night I was hanging out at
the entrance of my condo in Vito Cruz. We are usually part of a group
congregating around the balut vendor who has become a regular there.
This informal community is like the “umpukan” usually found in street
corners. Indeed, even in this vertical urban community, the ritual of
making “kwento” after dinner is a tradition that may have been
diminished, but has not been totally eradicated as a practice among
ordinary peoples. After all, while the group, mostly male, is composed
mainly of middle class, blue-collar workers, and professionals, we are
still ordinary Pinoys.
This guy I am referring
to works as a casino dealer. He's a graduate of criminology, and is
surprisingly interested in politics. He always engages me in small talk
about political developments, probing my position on issues. He knows
that I am sometimes invited to render my opinion on issues on TV and in
radio talk shows, and so he takes every opportunity to further quiz me
about politics.
But on that night, it was my
turn to quiz him. I was particularly interested in how ordinary citizens
react to the methodical, almost striptease-like demolition of Jojo
Binay by his political enemies, and how this affects their views of him.
Yes, the guy is fully familiar with what is happening. Yes, he knows
that the Binays are being accused of corruption. And yes, he is
convinced that the accusations are probably true. But yes, he will still
be voting for Jojo Binay nevertheless.
When I
probed him for answers, his response was characteristic not of somebody
blindly loyal, but one who has a sense of pragmatism. According to him,
even if Binay is guilty, he gets things done and has a track record.
This guy is resigned to the fact that politicians are a bunch of
tainted, flawed characters, but the more important trait is to show
results. In short, what the country needs is someone who can rescue us
from the problems we face, and not someone who may be squeaky clean but
is totally inept.
And yes, for him, it also did
not help at all that the people behind the attacks on Binay are also one
way or the other accused of, or implicated in, the PDAF and DAP
controversies.
When I asked him about Mar Roxas, his reply was dismissive. He is too elite, according to him, and too trying hard.
When I asked him about giving PNoy another term, he laughed and
rhetorically asked me if this is even possible since it is not allowed
in the Constitution. Besides, he thinks PNoy is only good in going after
his enemies, and has utterly failed in solving the problems of the
ordinary people.
I imagine that this is a story
that would once again draw the ire and raise the eyebrows of the upper
class elites and moralists. I am sure as the sun rises in the morning
that some will not only heap insults on guys like my casino dealer
friend, but would even malign me, my style of writing, and would even
dissect this article as if it is a dissertation treatise. Some will find
fault in it, using rubrics that are applied in academic publications,
something that is truly laughable considering that this is a blog, and
not a manuscript published in a refereed abstracted journal.
This is simply because they disagree with its message.
I may not like Jojo Binay, but I will not be as bold in dismissing the
views of this guy I talked to, and the rest of the 31 percent who still
would vote for the Vice President despite the mud that has been thrown
at him. Instead of indicting them for their preferences, what we should
be indicting and holding accountable are those who were tasked to rescue
us from the pits of political malaise, and have promised to make our
lives better, but instead have miserably failed.
It is their failure that would make Binay a lesser evil. It is their
sins of omission that would make Binay’s sins as palatable alternatives
that would be easier to swallow.
Indeed, in a
country whose capital is now at the brink of being in a state of
constant paralysis brought about by horrendous traffic, disenabled by
floods when it rains, whose highly mobile people are held hostage by a
chaotic, breakdown-prone mass transit system, and whose sense of
national pride takes a beating courtesy of an airport which has now been
a two-peat winner in the worst airport of the world contest, Binay’s
alleged sins would be easy to forgive and forget.
Many years back, when I was still dean of my college, I was part of a
panel that selected the various graduation awardees. One of the
questions we asked the student finalists was, who among the Presidents
of our country would they consider the best? Every single one of them
answered what to us, members of the panel, who all lived through the
political discomforts and excesses of Martial Law, was a horrifying
revelation—Ferdinand E. Marcos.
And when we
probed them, it became apparent that their preference for the
much-maligned dictator was not really an outcome of idolatrous worship.
Their preference for Marcos was a result less of a glossing over of his
excesses, but more as an indictment of the failures of those who
succeeded him.
It is granted that many of the
student finalists we interviewed were probably from the upper and elite
classes. But it is equally true that the view they held is equally, if
not more, pervasive among the lower classes and the ordinary citizens.
It is easy to dismiss the irrationality of the ordinary peoples. This
is not a monopoly of the Pinoy elites but in fact is the same theme that
played out in Thailand when the Bangkok elites looked down upon the
Thai lower classes, who kept on electing Thaksin and his allies. After
the coup in May of this year, the ruling bloc is now entertaining the
option of revising the rules to prevent the emergence of another
populist politician being elected by what to them were the unthinking,
unwashed masses.
In Indonesia, the establishment politicians,
shocked by the ascendancy of a rock-star Forester to the presidency,
have now used their traditional bastions of elite power and are planning
to rewrite the rules so that the Indonesian electorate will no longer
once again have a direct voice in the election of future presidents.
Elites always look down on the rationality of the masses. They easily
label the latter’s vote as a product of manipulation, of the masses
being bought, or of lower classes being blindly loyal to populist
political figures.
This is far from what I
sense. I sense that the votes of the masses are a reflection of what can
be considered as a rational choice of those who have less in life. They
would favor those who they can relate with, and those who can bring
them deliverance from their current states of unwell-being.
On the contrary, it is those who now make us accept that the only valid
parameter of performance is the very abstract nature of reforms who can
be accused of being guilty of fostering blind loyalty.
After all, the results they show as exhibits of success are the heads
of a Corona now de-crowned as Chief Justice, of a Gloria now unglorified
in her hospital bed, reportedly terribly ill in her arrested state, and
of Tanda, Sexy and Pogi, a.k.a. the three senator-friends of Janet, now
all jailbirds awaiting their fates. One of the reforms that they may
have tried to push for was to accelerate the disbursement of government
funds, but such has been shot down as procedurally unconstitutional, and
to date evidences are piling up that the intended outcomes of the
attempt to pump prime growth are in fact more imagined than real.
To someone who is in a constant state of food insecurity, and is highly
vulnerable and has very few escape options when vital public services
break down, jailing the corrupt is good, but it would never put food on
the table and money in the pocket. We can call this as a reflection of a
flawed sense of civics. We can even call it as a form of poverty too,
in moral terms. But this is a highly rational stance nonetheless.
To a rational mind, the material which is more palpable and visible is
the more valued warrant to any claim of having been compliant with the
promise of delivering results. On the other hand, an idealistic mind
would easily suspend consideration of the material, and would privilege
the symbolic rewards that are associated with the abstract yet
high-ordered parameters such as this intractable mantra of “reform,” as
the more important credential for someone to become worthy of support.
It is in this context that those who would now ask people to bear
suffering the inconvenience of a megalopolis in near-disarray, are the
ones who can be accused of being irrational. It is those who would ask
people to ignore their discomfort when streets are flooded, when trains
bursting at their seams with exasperated commuters run with open doors,
or worse stop in their tracks--this as a better option than risking
their lives and property in the hands of street criminals who prey on
them--who are in fact blinded. It is those who promise that there is
“more to come” from a President on whom they have placed their hopes and
dreams who are guilty of an unthinking form of loyalty.
It is those elites who are unfamiliar with the rational calculations of
those who are poor who would have the temerity to condemn the latter’s
preference for Binay or Marcos as a deeply flawed choice. They derided
the Marcos loyalists as blinded fools, and they would now demean my
friend and the 31 percent like him who would still vote for Binay as
miserably wallowing in blind idolatry.
Yet, it
is these people who are willing to suspend their judgment, and rest
their hopes on the promise of a surname, on an inherited wisdom of dead
parents, as if performance is something that is bequeathed and written
in a last will and testament, that are guiltier of blind idolatry.
The poor favoring someone who has a record of delivering concrete
results, palliatives they may be in some cases but still palpable, are
in fact acting rationally. It is ethically problematic when they
overlook the flaws and the corruption of their preferred political
figures, but this is rationally defensible when one considers what they
value as their urgent needs.
And the elites,
most of whom are equipped with a higher education, some of whom in fact
have graduate degrees attached to their names, are the ones who base
their choices not on the empirical but the symbolic, not on the factual
but on the mythical, not on the gut issues but on abstractions of yet to
be felt reforms.
Indeed, it is tragic when
people are forced to choose between reason and morals. But this is the
sad reality, even more heightened when virtuous leaders fail to deliver
on the gut issues.
The poor are simply loyal to
their material interests. We can condemn them for their choices, but we
could never demean them for acting irrationally against their
interests.
It is the elites who are prone to
blind loyalty, and have the tendency to elevate into a pedestal somebody
who is not deserving of such an esteemed place. It is people like them
who are willing to buck the force of constitutional stability, and would
dare propose the unconstitutional if only to provide a space for
someone they have elevated as a near infallible messiah who they now
idolize as having the monopoly over virtue.
They
are the ones who would like us to vote not on the basis of a record,
but on the basis of a promise. They are the ones who would like us to
believe that more is coming from someone that has a lot to explain for
doing so much less.
Now, who is guiltier of blind idolatry? You tell me.
----------
"Blind idolatry" ng masa versus "blind loyalty" ng mga elitista. Salpokan ng mga nabubulagan.
The view expressed in this blog article by Antonio P. Contreras, a former dean of De La Salle University, is not just an eye-opener to both the Masang Pilipino and the Pinoy Elites who are blinded by their respective political idolatry and political loyalty, but also this is something for the PNoy administration to ponder upon.
