Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m at a point where I’m more worried about my son’s future rather than my own. Whatever the reason, I’ve never been invested in elections until now. I’ve always tried to stay wherever the middle ground was at each time. Even when I didn’t like who won the presidency, I was always able to tell myself that, at least, all of those in the past tended to be 1) the lesser evil, and 2) have some amount of relevant experience as proof of competence.
Unfortunately, this year is grossly different.
This is perhaps the first time in my life as a voter that there is a candidate who is not just a lesser evil, but perhaps embodies the best one can hope of a politician that has a real shot at winning. Unfortunately, there are diabolical machinations that have mercilessly attacked her character for several years. These same machinations also effectively conditioned a large part of the population to embrace the least qualified candidate I have ever seen to the point where he may become the president. I have never seen this level of lying, deflecting, gaslighting and projecting from any presidential campaign. And a lot of people fell for the whole thing. It has been so effective that logic and reason has been abandoned by many. There are those who firmly believe unvetted Tiktok videos and Facebook posts over history books and official records. There’s nothing we can do about that. Not with the amount of time we have left. My remaining hope is that whoever are still undecided until Monday morning manage to separate the truth from the lies when the time comes, and then vote accordingly.
I have never been this worried about the results of an election my entire life. And today, I understood why. My faith in the Filipino people, including friends, acquaintances and family, will hang in the balance this coming week. And the high probability of its loss weighs heavily on me.