Politician Crows to Win Polls at P10K Per Voter

 

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

The gall of this mayoralty candidate telling the crowd in a hustings in the villages that despite being hated by many of her constituents she would still win the election at ten thousand pesos per head vote buy among the voters in the days before the election.

Gone are the days when our politicians were looked up by the masa as Statesmen. Politicians nowadays - whose wealth obviously came from corruption in public office - even crowed shamelessly their loot to the public.

Philippines politics goes to the dogs indeed. The more the Filipinos are mired in poverty the more they are vulnerable to the moneyed and not necessarily intelligent electoral candidates.

Image is internet grabbed.

Just watch how the members of the House of Thieves, er, Representatives in Quezon City debate. Only a few members of the more or less 300 Congressmen can argue intelligently about the bill one sponsors or the kind of questions being posed during a congressional investigation. Many of the members there are clowns. Many are sons and wives of those former “Clowngressmen” who finished their nine years’ term but their appetite to embezzle the public are insatiable.

I had coffee with pals in a mall where we talked about the political maneuverings of the two parties this early in a certain province.

I told them the candidate that can exceed the campaign funds especially the hundreds of millions if not billions of pesos intended for the pakurong (vote buying in the vernacular) wins the piece - prize of running a gargantuan governmental juggernaut whose perks and privileges are superior to other provinces.

“Walang malaking issue ngayon that the Opposition can exploit and belly up the incumbent kaya kuwarta ang pinaka factor in the victory of a certain bet that he can use to catapult himself to the perch of power,” I told them.

***

 A friend – who lives outside the province - asked me my take of a national official.

I told him the family is one of the richest in the region although he was involved in a corruption case before.

The friend told me that a supplier told him that this scion was the recipient himself of a ten percent S.O.P or cut of tens of millions of pesos of the hundreds of millions of pesos in this department.

“From the horse’s mouth, eh?” I told my friend about the knave in a money sleaze covered by the Anti- Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.

“Yes, from the horse’s mouth,” my pal retorted.

Read my other blog/column:

Paano Magnakaw at Ma-Bunkrupt ang mga Pulitiko