Politics of cynicism and hypocrisy

low a party-list can sink to pander to the command from the powers-that-be, but it is a betrayal of its reason for being. And no amount of sloganeering for labor and jobs now can erase from the official records an act that is equal to a trade unionist crossing a picket line to join the scabs.

But then again, the TUCP may have been emboldened by the cancer of historical amnesia currently sweeping the country. Very few demand an accurate, factual accounting of the past. Very few, even in body politics, want rigorous recordkeeping of past events. Truth is malleable. Political actors with vested interests can create their own version of reality, an alternate universe that suits their vested and sinister interests.

And even the worst political actors hardly pay for the transgressions done. In the case of the party-list groups at the House, it is even the parties that stay firmly committed to their mandates and their constituents that often pay a price for doing the right thing.

In 2019, there was only one farmbased party-list group outside of the Makabayan bloc that voted against the Rice Tariffication Law ( RTL). The Butil Party, which traditional bailiwick runs through the rice farming areas of Central Luzon, knew that the RTL would only bring palay prices down without significantly reducing rice prices for consumers. With the palay price drop, a tsunami of misery would descend into the rice farming areas of the region where the average farm size is less than two hectares. The untold suffering on the part of the rice farmers will not even tame down food-based inflation and will not lift the broader economy. So, it voted “No” to the RTL, the only mainstream party-list that rejected the RTL. What Butil said during the deliberations on the RTL came true — small rice farmers ended up as dead men walking.

All the other party-list groups supposedly representing small farmers voted “Yes.” As did the district representatives that represented rice-farming areas heavily populated by small rice farmers.

In the 2019 election, Butil lost its seat in Congress, the only time it lost since the party-list system started. Butil suffered its first political loss for doing the right thing and for committing to its mandate and to its small farmer-constituents.

You may want to ask these questions. Where is justice in that? Why was doing the right thing penalized? Why did standing up for your political constituencies and mandates bring so much misery?

One answer is this. The politics of cynicism and hypocrisy is the better survival plan in a context of historical revisionism. Bad politics and bad political actors pay no price for the politics of cynicism and hypocrisy.