“No one can demand that religion should be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life, without concern for the soundness of civil institutions, without a right to offer an opinion on events affecting society.”
-Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium 183
A year onto the May 9, 2022 elections in the Philippines, preparations are underway for hopefuls in the presidential, vice-presidential, congressional (senate and house) and local (regional, provincial, city and municipal) seats. We expect to see more of this after the filing of candidacies this October, with all supposedly championing pro-people issues. But how are we gearing for this exercise as members of the Church? How do we discern pro-people actions from those merely masquerading as one but furthering their own interests against the common good? What are our duties as faithful?
The right to suffrage is a constitutionally-guaranteed right. It is a function of democracy which, with people as sovereign and from whom all power emanates, provides for the selection of the country’s leaders through voting.
However, the 2022 elections are set amidst a grim backsliding of democracy, good governance and social justice under President Rodrigo Duterte, and made even worse during the Covid-19 pandemic.
What’s at Stake in the 2022 Elections?
The May elections provide an opportunity for the electorate to hold their leaders accountable and demand that human rights be front and center of any development discourse. A life of dignity, free from strife and oppression should not be a vision but a something we need to actively and collectively work for.
It is thus imperative to choose leaders of known probity and integrity, and whose track record demonstrate their stance especially for those who have least in life as a result of unjust systems — the poor, oppressed and marginalized.
Absence of a Life of Dignity
The economy has sunk at an all-time low never before seen since World War II, and only exacerbated by the pandemic. Majority of our people face unemployment, underemployment, hunger and poverty. In 2020, there were at least 5.8 million unemployed Filipinos, with a 12.7% unemployment rate.(i) This majority is the poorest 75% of families without savings who have been in economic distress.(ii) Meanwhile, neoliberal policies favoring big business, transnational corporations, big banks and their local counterparts continue to dominate. This has resulted in huge public debts (PhP 9.8 T as of end 2020), as well as small businesses and domestic agriculture barely surviving. Poverty is at its worst in rural areas where landless peasants’ plight are exacerbated by corporate landgrabs, climate crisis and conflicts. Four decades of neoliberal globalization have kept the economy backward and pre-industrial. National industrialization has remained a pipedream. The net effect of more and more people living in further misery is not a life of dignity.
