THE OLD paradigm was, all politics is local. Apparently, there has been a paradigm shift, at least, in our neck of the woods. Instead of local, it’s now lugaw – rice gruel, porridge or arrozcaldo. The jury is still out on the root word. Sounds Chinese, a quick concession to how much of Philippine culture has been influenced by the ancient state-civilization that is gobbling up territories in the South China Sea like crazy legally owned by the Pearl of the Orient.
Can the porridge be older than the pearl?
The old phrase, all politics is local, is attributed to an American, not Chinese, politician by the name of Tip O’Neil, former speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States. O’Neil must be a distant relative of Sen. Franklin Drilon, heft-wise. Size matters, even in politics, also a contact sport. The phrase means a politician must focus on local issues that are close to the heart, or stomach, of the voters, as part of the strategy to win elections.
Is lugaw a local issue?
It depends on whose or what side you are. Vice President Leni Robredo, who is being increasingly nudged to aspire for the highest office in the land, believes it is not only a political issue but an existential one. Some of her avid supporters are doing it two-fold: 1) to feed the hungry and 2) to raise funds for her campaign in 2022. It is one for the book, and is good material for history and memoirs.
Others, on the other side of the political fence, scoff at the idea, triggering a still simmering debate over whether lugaw is essential or non-essential. If you are a security guard in a gated village, the privileged landscape can fool you. Those who believe in the former can raise their fists; those who pick the latter, can do a fist-bump, which has been the default iconic equivalent of handshake in keeping with the health protocol.
Critics of the lugaw strategy, mostly members of President Duterte’s one-tone choir, have been criticized, in turn, by Robredo herself as non-essential — the kind that proves their own, derogative logic: non-essential. They are there for lack of merit, other than mere political appointees who know whom. Time will tell who’s, on the side of history, the right side.
Right now, history in the making is connecting the dots that more and more people are going hungry as lockdowns after more lockdowns are imposed hither and thither to stop people from moving around and spreading the invisible virus. It’s a vicious cycle that forces people to play the Russian roulette, die of hunger or die of the virus. It’s the perfect definition of dilemma: a choice between two bad options.
It doesn’t have to be, if you follow the logic of the lugaw. If may not be the best for the hungry, but it sure will go a longway in preventing more people from kicking the bucket because of empty stomach. Is hunger a local or national issue? Pragmatism tells us, it must be local first. That’s where the rubber meets the road, and where politics really matters. Roads and bridges and airports can come later. Good manners and right conduct matter, too. But, first things first.
That’s how Esau of the Bible lost his birthright to his younger brother, Jacob – soon to be Israel. He sold his birthright as the first born with preferred rights to Jacob for a bowl of porridge. Hunger before honor.
That’s what has insanely ailed local politics for the longest time. Voters are ready and willing to sell their votes to the highest bidder. The bid price goes higher every poll, local or national. You can’t feed your starving brood with principles but you can with Tito, Vic and Joey palmed off by every promising politician who has enough of them in his pocket to net you in his pocket and line it up after the polls with corruption-tainted largesse.
In short, we are what we are today because most voters believe all politics is lugaw. It doesn’t matter, whether it’s healthy or not, as long as it fills the stomach for the time being. Tomorrow can take care of itself, or the politicians will.
The true lesson of the lugaw is not to miss the point. Know thy priority and stick to it like your life depends on it, not that politicians’ life depend on it. Otherwise, it is how Sen. Panfilo Lacson described Duterte’s leveraging the Visiting Forces Agreement with US to pay more as extortion. People are getting hungry for a lot of reasons: poverty, pandemic, the economy in the doldrum as a result, and corruption going up not down. Lugaw is a simplistic answer, although it may serve the purpose of the moment. The people need a better solution, a long term one, if not a lasting one.
The old paradigm works. Focus on issues that really matter to the people not as voters but as constituents, not in the Machiavellian framework of means to an end, but the people as the end themselves. The lugaw kind of politics must be a thing of the past, or the Philippine will never be a country of the future.
A neighboring bully loves kangkong. Looks like it wouldn’t mind if a neighbor finds itself in the kangkungan.
