IBOTO ANG KAPATIRAN

Martin Bautista, Adrian Sison, Zosimo Paredes II.

We need people like them in our Senate.

http://www.angkapatiran.org
http://www.kpkcommongood.blogspot.com

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Spread the word. And vote for them.

THERE’S THE RUB
Again, the ‘wasted vote’

By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Last updated 01:14am (Mla time) 04/18/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- The last time I spoke with Ang Kapatiran [The Brotherhood] party candidates, they were saying that having gotten this far was already a victory in itself, independently of whether they actually barge into the Senate or not. It’s true. As I’ve written on several occasions, no good thing really goes to waste. Small things are stepping stones to great things. Their accumulation is what makes historic things happen.

But I’m still hoping for a miracle to happen: for the voters of this country to be stricken by light like Paul of Tarsus and convert to wisdom. The only resistance against them comes from a couple of arguments I myself have heard from friends over the past month or so. One, let’s face it, the political realities in this country are such that the voters will vote for the strong candidate -- and the Kapatiran candidates are far behind in the surveys. And, two, the votes for them are therefore likely to be wasted, might as well lend them to those who stand a better chance.

I’ve heard the exact same arguments raised before against candidates who were completely meritorious but who were not as popular as their benighted rivals. And I’ve written many columns to answer those objections. Two of them in particular, “The heroic vote,” and “The wasted vote,” I’m reproducing here in cut-and-paste form (some things can never be sufficiently belabored):

Yes, we do need to see political realities. But doing so does not mean we should resign ourselves to them, or worse perpetuate them. We have in fact two options when faced with a harsh reality, such as this country’s lack of political maturity. We can resign ourselves to it, or we can try to change it. We can perpetuate it or we can try to stop it. We can make it worse or we can make it better.

We can say, “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it, I might as well do as everybody does.” Or we can say, “This is unacceptable, I must do something about it. Maybe my one voice is not loud enough, but it will be so if it finds an echo in the voices of others. Maybe my one vote is not dazzling enough, but it will be so if it lights the fires of others. But I do not raise my voice now, and I will perpetuate the silence. I do not light the fire now, and I will deepen the darkness. I do not try to make things better, and I will make things worse.”

Heroes do not become heroes by thinking, “I will do the heroic thing.” Heroes become heroes by saying, “I will do the right thing.” Which became heroic because doing the right thing is the hardest thing of all. You don’t always have to die for your principles, you can always live for them. The second is often more heroic than the first -- in this country more than others. We’ve always been willing to die for democracy, it’s time we started being willing to live for it.

I do not buy the notion of the “wasted vote.” The only wasted vote I can see is the one you give to a candidate you do not believe in simply because you think he or she has a chance to win. That is boundless waste, not least because it stands to waste the country. To this day, I do not regret not voting for Joseph Estrada in 1998. To this day, I do not see that I wasted my vote voting for somebody else. If there was any “wasted vote,” it was the one that went to Estrada. That is so not just because he never got to finish his term but because people voted for him simply because “he was going to win anyway” whatever they did. People who do not want to appear like fools by voting for a “weak candidate” are on a straight path to it.

Correspondingly, the wasted vote is the one you withhold from the candidate you deem deserving because “he is not going to win anyway.” That is a self-fulfilling prophecy, guaranteeing doom -- and not just for your candidate. The only thing worse than being disempowered is having the power and not knowing you do. Or worse, knowing you do and abdicating it. The vote is a great power, and it is something we hold in our hands. The victory of candidates is not written in the stars, it is written in our hearts. The victory of candidates is not foreordained, it is decided by us. We do not vote for candidates, they do not win. We vote for candidates, they win.

Even if the candidate you believe in is not a popular one, what of it? Voting is not just something you do for a candidate, it is something you do for yourself. Or to yourself. Elections are a test of character, but it is not just a test of character for the candidate, it is a test of character for the voter, too. It’s not just the candidate who’s on trial in elections, it is you, too. When you vote, you do not just decide the kind of life you want for the nation, you decide what kind of life you want for yourself. You can choose either the life of a lemming and throw yourself off a cliff because everybody is doing so or the life of a human being and act as reason and conviction tell you to.

At the end of the day, you do not just have to live with the candidate you have inflicted on the nation, you have to live with yourself and the wound you have inflicted on yourself. You can’t be true to yourself, you can’t be true to the nation. Stop complaining about this country going nowhere. There is no vote that is wasted on a candidate you believe is fit to run this country, whether he wins or not. You do not win when you vote a fool or a tyrant to office because he or she is the “strong candidate,” you lose -- even if he or she wins. Above all when he or she wins. And you do not lose when you vote for a candidate as your conscience bids, you win -- even if he or she loses. Above all if he or she loses: It is but the beginning of struggle.

The “wasted vote” is a stupid concept. You keep worrying about it, you’re wasting your time, your energy and your life.