Advocating Or Campaigning

GLIMPSES
Jose Ma. Montelibano

Whenever elections become a national focus, there is a lot of effort to teach voters how to vote wisely. It used to be more direct when voters were told clearly to vote wisely. Today, the messaging is somewhat distorted because the desire of political advocates, and politicians who are not in power but want to be, is for voters to vote in their preferred candidates and achieve good governance that way. I say distorted because the primary role of governance belongs to those who govern, and good governance.

It seems that citizens are politicized because of bad governance, or bad politics. Citizens are roused to political exercise like voting when there are elections, and the backdrop is constantly negative. Citizens are motivated to become active only when they angry or frustrated at serving public officials, or at the utter lack of better options even among those who want to run for office.

Politics, then, in the Philippines is not only very partisan and divisive, it is about bad governance rather than good governance. Any talk about good governance is misdirected to the wrong audience, not to those who ought to be taught about good governance, but those who are victims of bad governance. The main effect often is the changing of those who govern but not changing bad governance to good governance. The side effect is that Filipinos do not understand politics are a state of affairs that impact on a city, a province or a country - they only understand politics as a partisan activity and ultimately shy away from it. And the ultimate effect is that citizens know as little of responsibility as they see in those who govern them.

I have monitored advocacy groups for ten years. Most of them operate in the Internet because they are abroad. Some operate in the provinces and have limited reach. A few make their mark from the many groups which are active in Metro Manila because they can sometimes get interviewed on television and suddenly are known beyond their narrow audiences. And, then, there are the very few who are supported, or are extensions of, vested interests in business and the academe. These vested interests are not necessarily evil, but they are vested nonetheless and backed up by resources in cash, in kind and in facilities.

While the expressed desire of most is to start a movement, almost none of them succeed. The proof of this lack of success is the absence of any popularly known movement. When the target audience of these movements started by advocacy groups is the voting population itself, about 45 million Filipinos in all, there is not a single movement which one can say is known beyond a very small population circle.

Contrasted with traditional political parties, advocacy groups by themselves have little chance of making a difference. Political parties operate everyday, recruit and maintain people to their organizations, reward their key leaders and workers with jobs or projects, and are nationally represented or active even in between elections. They have grassroots presence even when their supporters are not formally registered and may have shifting loyalties.

Advocacy groups are dependent on media, on a few sponsors with funds and facilities, and the Internet for Filipinos active from abroad. Without media, without funds and facilities to host gatherings and conferences, and without the Internet to get free access to some attention, advocacy groups will have small constituencies, mostly themselves and personal friends. When they operate in Metro Manila and the Internet, they will have many common members as well.

And this is the crux of the problem. The advocacy hits the secondary market - the advocates and their personal networks of friends instead of the general public. Even with media support, the advocacy may find a wider reach but participation will hardly grow in proportion. Without the population itself agitated and ready to act, as in the two Edsa revolutions, advocacy groups accomplish little.
Their success rate is less from their performance and more from the state of emotions of their target publics.

I have often wondered if advocates for change and political reform are simply idealists whom a people in the dark cannot reach, cannot understand. There is this case of a doctor lecturing about sanitation and the consequences when people do not wash their hands before eating, when people do not wash themselves properly and regularly. Yet, the audience they lecture to have no regular supply of clean water.

Citizens who have little knowledge that, in a democracy, they are the engine that drives a nation to productivity, to growth and development, to peace and prosperity have as little chance to be responsible. And they will not be accountable either except by the misery of their lives from bad governance, from corruption and from poverty.

Citizens who are not aware and ready to realize their responsibility can hardly influence their rulers to be good governors. The governed, to be the pressure point for good governance, must have equal or greater power than those who govern. An ordinary citizen attains extraordinary power only in unity with other citizens, enough of them to offset the individual advantages of a rich and influential person. And that unity, if only achieved and used in anger and without new enlightenment, will only pay homage to bloody revolutions that litter the pages of history and the soil of countries.

Advocates, by the nature of advocacy groups, gain power by influence. But influence needs reach so more will know and may be converted to the advocacy, and the advocacy or cause itself seen as the answer to a pressing need so that there will be commitment and action from the converts. Advocates cannot be simple technocrats, not when the state of our weak nation is concerned and the future of our children are threatened.

There is a great challenge to political advocates today. They cannot be elitist in perspective and behavior or they will be no better than those they complain about. If we reach out to the people, the people must be able to reach out to us. It is not only the favorite causes of advocates that the people need, it is also the pressing needs of the people that advocates must address.

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“In bayanihan, we will be our brother’s keeper and forever shut the door to hunger among ourselves.”