It is a testimony to the undifferentiated nature of our political system that many other social institutions are mobilized during elections.  There’s the family, there’s religion, there’s the business sector, and then there’s the science of surveys.  Their chief purveyors try to convert the power they wield into the currency of politics.  We are disturbed … Read more

The rise in the number of unemployed Filipinos in the midst of economic growth has made our government officials take a serious look at the current economic strategy. This pattern of jobless growth partly explains why the level of mass poverty in our country has remained unchanged even as the economy seems to be growing. … Read more

Some moral progress is noticeable in the way we now refer to our house help, though not always in the way we treat them. First we called them alila (servant), a term that recalls the feudal culture from which it was drawn.  Then for a long time they were simply referred to as katulong (house … Read more

Preelection surveys do often take the form of self-fulfilling oracles. This happens when voters find the published results so compelling as to make them vote according to the predictions. The opposite, of course, can happen. Voters may react to survey results in such a way as to be motivated to prevent them from being realized … Read more

Bizarre as it is, politicians running for local positions have come to accept it as part of the political reality: that in some remote Philippine communities, candidates must secure a clearance from armed illegal groups before they can enter an area and campaign. The permit to campaign is normally given in exchange for a cash … Read more

I had strong reservations about going on a long motorcycle ride in this sweltering summer heat.  When you are on a bike and you are going fast, you don’t notice you are sweating. The water your body secretes to cool you down evaporates in the wind as quickly as it forms on the skin. Dehydration … Read more

It’s one of those moments in a democracy when we’re reminded that the rights of citizenship come with corresponding duties. I refer to the fact that the deadline for the filing of income tax returns this year came just a month before the midterm elections. This fortuitous sequencing of two vital events that mark our … Read more

A survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) in February this year highlights three interesting findings on the state of Catholicism in the Philippines. First, that weekly church attendance has significantly gone down from a high of 64 percent in July 1991 to a low of 37 percent in February 2013.  Second, that only … Read more

There’s no hard evidence to confirm it.  But the growing perception is that at no other time in our nation’s political history have political families become more brazen in promoting their interests than in this year’s elections.  One quickly notes this in the senatorial slates of the two dominant coalitions.  The opposition United Nationalist Alliance … Read more

For many senatorial candidates who take elections seriously and exert great effort to address the important issues of the day, it must be terribly frustrating to be confronted by the results of preelection surveys. Nothing seems to matter except sheer media exposure and possession of a familiar name in order to score high. The preference … Read more