Manny Villar lifting the poor from the dungeons of misery and from a life less than human is not just an empty promise but a manipulative mechanism targeting the very reason why 24 million Filipinos remain poor – the poor do not understand why they are poor. They don’t see that “poverty is not the lack of income but the deprivation of basic freedoms” in creating a life that they have a “reason to value”.
Villar becoming the next President will not solve the problem of poverty. Villar runs on a platform based on that malicious promise which is akin to man landing on Mars and back inside a plastic balloon. But the poor don’t understand this. They see Dolphy and Willie and they see that life is a matter of luck. Luck brings fortune to one or two, but to lift millions from living unhappy lives, a country needs its basic structure to work for the benefit of the least advantaged.
Politics is persuasion. The biggest question that young men like us should ask ourselves right now is how to explain to the poor, in the most logical way, that nobody puts money into politics unless he is assured of profit. This is no longer a question between good and evil. The good will win in the end but the end is too far in sight. The time is now. The time is ripe. Young men and women should now go and tell the poor to vote for change. Villar is all but change.
While it is plausible to say that candidates can be beholden to those who are financing them, there is however greater evil in having one venture into the greatest fight of his life, winning the Presidency, by using his own money. Is the Presidency the greatest job available? The answer is a big no. But when one asks, is the Presidency the most lucrative job there is? In real politics, where taking advantage and exploiting the weakness of the electorates matter more than anything else in order to win, the answer is a resounding yes.
The logic is simple. Does one spend several billions of pesos to reap honor? No, you sacrifice your life for it. Men of honor do not dream of being kings. It is destiny. Why does one use his massive resources in order to be in the highest position of the land? The answer is simple. It is about power. If money is used to acquire power, then money fuels the unending desire for more.
Politics is a game among men but it is not their future that is at stake. Odysseus said, “war is young men dying and old men talking". But change is possible. It happens when people will begin to believe in themselves and not on a false claim that he is “one of us” because even from the vantage point of a post mortem dei, he is not.
