Go for Gordon

[caption id="attachment_572" align="alignleft" width="162" caption="Sen. Richard Gordon"][/caption]

Who will you vote for as president this 2010 elections?

William Esposo's choice is Senator Richard Gordon. Esposo is convinced that Senator Dick Gordon is the right president to have in 2010 because "more than his proven track record as Olongapo City Mayor, SBMA Chairman, Tourism Secretary and now Senator," Dick Gordon recognizes our core problems --- "not knowing his real history and possessing counter-productive values."

Senator Richard Gordon is my choice, too, for very much the same reasons. Dick Gordon offers the kind of politics this country has been wanting for many years --- transformational, not transactional.

But his critics say he is  no different from trapos who take advantage of, say, a boxing match, to make their candidacy known and thereby enhance their winnability. A case in point is Dick Gordon's involvement in the negotiation for the release of the three ICRC volunteers kidnapped by the Abusayyaf. Because Dick Gordon will be running for president this coming election, his critics say, he is capitalizing on the situation to enhance his winnability.

That's just off the mark. To begin with, Gordon has many achievements he can use to buttress his candidacy. Consider Olongapo. Or SBMA.

On automated election & pervert automatons

Senator Richard Gordon is still in an incensed mode--the same mode he had when he came in Holy Cross of Davao College for a forum on poll automation. Mr. Gordon earlier slammed the election survey conducted by Pulse Asia, saying it tends to "massage" the minds of the voters  "to vote for those whose names always bob up in surveys."

In his commentary in Philippine Daily Inquirer, which makes the case for automated election system, Mr. Gordon exhibited the same level of objection not only to election surveys but to the pervert political system as a whole. While an automated election system will be a first important move to "reinventing government", he said he has "no illusions that automated elections would have an automatic transformational effect on our politics." He added:

When we hear one candidate say that you should have a billion pesos to spend before you run for president, we know that there is something wrong with our politics.

When we see opinion surveys being manipulated this early to condition people’s minds and their preferences, we know that democracy is being perverted.

When little attention is being paid to service records and qualifications for high office, we are reducing our electoral politics to the common denominator of money.

Election surveys 'massage' voters' minds—Gordon

Senator Richard Gordon slammed the survey conducted by Pulse Asia, a social research institution. At a forum held just the other day in Holy Cross of Davao College about the poll automation in the offing, Mr. Gordon, who is not one of those preferred presidential candidates per Pulse Asia survey, said that surveys like the one conducted by Pulse Asia tend to "massage the minds" of the voters to vote for those whose names always bob up in surveys.

On March 12, Pulse Asia released its survey results regarding the May 2010 elections. Sampling 1,200 adults, aging 18 years old and above, the nationwide survey conducted between February 2 to 15, yields the following results.

Instead of choosing our leaders on the basis of valid criteria, disregarding irrelevant considerations, popularity becomes the name of the game, Mr. Gordon said.

What happens when popularity becomes the basis of choosing a leader, Mr. Gordon said, is that important issues such as track record and performance and qualifications--which are more important than popularity--do not take a center stage. For if the candidate is popular, it doesn't mean he is a good leader. Far from it, Mr. Gordon said.

Prof. Randy David, a professor of sociology at University of the Philippines and columnist of PDI, finds this popularity as "the main factor" in our political system. As opposed to the system in the USA where issues are debated and discussed, and visions articulated, "in our system...it’s the other way around—mass appeal or celebrity status (or “winnability”) not only comes first, it is the main factor," Prof. David said. "The political program becomes no more than an afterthought, a catalogue of sound bites with no internal coherence."

"When issues take the backseat — qualification, competence, political record, personal history, and political vision also become peripheral," Prof. David adds. "The whole system gets fixated with popularity."

As a parting words, Mr. Gordon urged the audience, mostly college students, to be the master of their vote, to think. Then, he quoted Rene Descartes who said, "I think, therefore I am."

The forum was organized by the Political Science and Mass Communications students.