AT best, the recent divisive elections have provided our nation with a point of reflection. While new presidents were greeted with celebration and immediate acceptance in previous elections, the current winner was not well-received, but instead accepted by many with incredulity. With all the sophistication introduced in the counting and completion of the electoral outcomes, people have become even more skeptical of the validity of these results.
During the election, I tried to engage with supporters of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. to understand their mindset. The perception is that these people are engulfed with an inability to grasp reality, perhaps due to lack of education. I, however, found them to be quite intelligent and passionate about their cause. I teased them to be affected by self-induced Alzheimer’s disease, but such compulsion for forgetfulness and outright rejection of history are really borne out of frustration. The saddest news is that there are many of them.
What is causing this frustration? Sure, thanks to technology, fake news is everywhere, but why do many accept it unconditionally? Coming out of Martial Law, many believed that the People Power revolution would bring about structural outcomes that will finally uplift their conditions. Instead, they have gotten more of the same poverty; worse, dynasties and associated injustices seem to have multiplied.
Despite the impressive economic growth achieved in the last 36 years, poverty, especially in the remotest regions, remains. The Philippines still has a fairly high poverty rate in 2020, with more than 16 percent of the population living below the poverty line. Moreover, inequality remains the highest among Asean nations, as the Gini coefficient was recorded at 42.3 in 2018—just slightly down from 44.6 in 2015. Because of continued reliance on agriculture for income and inequality in wealth distribution, about 17.6 million Filipinos struggle to afford necessities.
The source of this frustration is rooted in the inherent inequalities in society. Persons with lower incomes face discrimination, stigma, and other forms of negative stereotypes that reduce their social participation and gainful employment opportunities, as well as political support for immediate and comprehensive social protection. Certain sectors have been marginalized, and prudent macro-fiscal policies have not addressed their inequalities. Many of these policies worsened these disparities.
Nevertheless, recognizing these problems does not necessarily imply that solutions can be found. Marcos, Jr. did not discuss details of his economic platform. By contrast, the other presidential aspirant, Vice President Leni Robredo, focused on the issues and proposed clear and doable measures, including unemployment insurance and anti-discrimination, to address them. This ability to isolate the problems and her proven capability in implementation sparked the overwhelming volunteerism for her campaign—an event never before seen in the country’s history.
However, her campaign was not enough to capture the hearts and minds of roughly 60 percent of voters. Thus, the outcome highlights the issue of information. We may have the scientific proofs and knowledge to devise policies and reforms, but are these really the solutions that people want? Political structures seem to have prevented us from knowing the needs of the majority. More importantly,
politicians have made it a strategy to not reveal their platforms, turning elections into a personal cause.
Leonid Hurwicz, an Economics Nobel Prize winner, highlighted the difficulties faced by social planners in designing policies when the quality of such policies depends on the spread of information among several individuals. He suggests that any solution should consider the incentives of self-interested agents, including the state. Rules must be established so that the state, on whose information the decision relies, will find it in its interest to talk about its options and reveal its true preferences.
Because social incentives are not necessarily aligned with individual incentives, the policy itself does not matter, but the process in which this is formulated. In effect, all agents, including the state, are forced to debate these policies and desired programs.
The 2022 elections, in fact, marked the end of the EDSA People Power movement. However, in Robredo’s rallies, a more effective movement emerges where people come out to participate, listen, discuss, and make a difference. Here, facts do matter enormously and should be framed within appropriate social values so that these are taken seriously. Simultaneously, one must understand the opposing worldviews of other people. The movement needs to challenge these worldviews if proven wrong and work out possible compromises and solutions if possible. From such a discourse, the government is compelled to design the necessary mechanism to improve social welfare.
To have any hope of healing the divisions in our society, social discourse should be required in policymaking for everyone to be aware of the information problem and begin the unification process.
Dr. Leonardo A. Lanzona, Jr. is Professor of Economics at the Ateneo de Manila University.