In 2017, I finished a study, “Ethnography of Vote Buying in Virac.” I based it on data gathered in the course of three consecutive elections (2010, 2013, 2016). As an ethnography (the description of culture), it aimed at describing the political culture of Virac, with emphasis on its most salient feature, the practice of vote buying. In this Part 2, I will discuss the basic findings of the study, in terms of their relevance to the upcoming local elections on May 12.
Patronage politics
The practice of vote buying can only be fully understood within its broad context, which is the culture of patronage. Also known as “clientelism,” “patriarchalism” or “feudalism,” it is an entire system that governs human relations in all its aspects – social, cultural, economic and political. Historically, it manifested in pre-modern societies. It supposedly disappeared in modernity, but some societies remain large feudal/clientelist even under modern trimmings, and the Philippines arguably is one such society. In such a system, the basic relational principle is that of the patron-client or benefactor-beneficiary where the former holds decision-making authority and controls the supply of resources, while the latter is the powerless recipient of both rule and goods. It is an unequal relationship that functions well so long as the parties involved deliver respective dues. It is an ideology that derived from the patriarchal ethics of the family where the male parent takes the superior and determinant role and the children the passive receivers. It works on the assumed benevolence of the father and the obedience and gratitude of children. It is a reciprocal, albeit unequal relationship. In the Philippines, this operates according to the value of utang na loob.
Patronage and vote buying
From the family, the patronage principle is extended to the larger scopes: neighborhood, community, institutions, company, oh even in barkada circles. And surely in politics. While all relationships are political, “politics” to refer to government both in incumbency (the sitting government) and in-the-making (elections). But let us focus on elections. In interviews I did with stakeholders, while everybody paid lip service to the wrongness of vote buying, nobody admitted guilt. They all see it in patronage framework. For the candidates, it was more a voluntary grant of favors labeled as “pa-omok” or even “regalo,” a demonstration or proof of their care for the people. On the part of the voters, see it as something they deserve to receive, an entitlement (perhaps taking seriously the familiar wisdom “hare an sa tawo kaya akua nyo sana”).
In that sense, the term “vote buying” is a misnomer. The use of market terms like “buying” is misleading. It is not about free market exchange where the buyer and seller both make rational and free choice to buy or to sell. It is patronal interface between the benevolent benefactor and the grateful recipient. Unequal yes, but mutually reinforcing. A clear indication that vote buying is not a free-market transaction is the fact that the buyer (the candidate) does not have a way to make sure that the seller has delivered the goods. There had been accounts of monitoring mechanisms on this matter, such as the use of the plasu (coded identifying markers) or the white carbon. But these methods cannot be implemented on a massive scale. This is also why anti-vote buying advocates can counsel voters that “ang imo sa bulsa, ang konsiyensiya sa balota.”
Even so, vote buying candidates mostly end up winning, which has so baffled anti-vote buying advocates. They do not seem to realize that vote buying is clientelist exchange governed by its own ethics of obligations based on utang na loob and patron-client reciprocity. Such lack of genuine insight leads to blaming people as ignorant or deficit in moral principle. “Vote buying” or whatever is more appropriate term to call it, operates according to its own moral code of conduct.
The plain truth therefore is that elections in a patronal/clientelist setting is not a free expression of people’s mandate according to the framework of liberal democracy (notion of the exercise of the right to participate in decision-making, which we inherited from the Americans), but a fight among contenders (typically the elite) to the role of chief patron/patriarch/benefactor in society. So election results are not a reflection of choices of individual voters, not a product of their intelligence or the lack of it; they are indicative of how far the candidates could muster resources to secure and demonstrate their position as Lord Giver. The differences in amounts offered vary according to 1) capacity and 2) the relative importance of the position aspired for. Which is why candidates look to this tactic as the fundamental means of winning, even those who package themselves (newbies typically) as “clean” and the “choice of the intelligent voter.” All other devices to win are merely enhancers, and indeed a camouflage, to complement this basic strategy.
All these are baffling to the well-meaning advocate of democracy based on free, “intelligent” and “conscience” vote. So let us go deeper in our discussion.
History of vote buying in Catanduanes
At the very start of the 20th century, the new colonial masters, the Americans, converted Catanduanes into a subprovince. Corollary to that, they introduced popular elections to choose the local officials. While giving us democracy in form, it was not matched with the necessary substance. Patronage continued to hold in basic political relations. So therefore, patronal basis for voting prevailed. Vote buying, understood in a broad sense of offering material goods to influence voting, was practiced from the very start, albeit it took changing modalities through time, in what I call the three “Bs” of vote buying: bahog, bubod and bakal.
Bahog. During pre-war elections, the hopefuls would treat the voters to a punsyon or sumptuous feast on the day of the polling. Up until my early childhood, the wee hours of election day would be punctuated by the cries of animals (carabaos, pigs) being butchered for the purpose. By morning and throughout the day, ward leaders would herd voters to the ramada-enclosed feasting site. Apparently, this practice has a very ancient origin. In anthropological literature, this is akin to what is known as the Big Feast of the “Big Man” feted by the Chief of an indigenous community to demonstrate and renew his authority over the territory. In the Cordilleras, this is still being practiced. There is reason to believe that the current “Sharon” take-home giveaways during fiestas have roots in this age-old practice. In the traditional Big Feast, the Chief would give meat portions to his constituents to take home. So, all these suggest that vote-buying is deeply rooted in our cultural gene.
Bubod. This is undertaken not during elections, in between elections, during a politician’s incumbency or the politician wannabee’s waiting period. “Bubod” means the constant feeding of one’s flock of chicken to keep them in control. Otherwise, they would stray to another politician’s patronage. In this sense, a sitting politician would maintain a dispensing station for the giving of goods to an endless line of petitioners. We knew of an absentee congressman where news of his coming to the island spread like wildfire such that the folk would flock to his Big House and ask for cash for myriad purposes (KBL or kasal, binyag, libing, trophy and uniform for pa-liga, crown for Miss Purok, medical expenses, etc.); and no one goes home empty-handed. When time was short, the congressman’s family would climb up the top floor of the Big House and shower cash to the crowd below, indeed doing a “bubod.” But this strategy had evolved into many forms. The point is to sustain the grant of favors to voters in view of the next election.
Bakal. This is the form of granting favors to voters that involves giving cash just before elections. This is when the term vote-buying came into use. In Catanduanes, the first recorded use of this tactic according to local historian Bernardo Vargas was in the 1965 election for congressman between Jose Alberto and Francisco Perfecto. The winner (Alberto) was said to have distributed one peso each to voters. Henceforth, this form of granting cash hand-outs became the crucial means to win elections. It also led to the development of a well-oiled machinery called the ward system where the farthest nooks and crannies of communities had to be covered by ward leaders that do the monitoring and distribution of cash and/or in-kind goods.
Patronage and elections
While vote buying in its strict sense is the “bakal” modality, it can be said that all three Bs (bahog, bubod, bakal) are forms of vote buying if by it we mean the patronal grant of favors by politicians and politician wannabees on voters to influence their voting preferences. In that case, two types of vote buying (or patronal favors) can be identified: 1) direct, and 2) indirect. The direct types are those offered during the election period, which come in case or in kind. The indirect types are those extended by serving elected officials, mainly dole-outs but also other forms of favors such as employment, for the purpose of maintaining and expanding one’s electoral base of support, in preparation for the next election. For politicians-in-waiting (losers and newbies alike), they must engage in indirect vote buying if they ever want to take their chance in the next polls (e.g. playing Santa Claus to distribute Xmas gifts, handing out free lugaw to the public at the slightest provocation).
Patronage and corruption.
It must be pointed out that the direct and indirect forms of vote buying are inseparable. They belong to a continuous functioning loop that is necessary in a patronage system that is made to operate, or be justified, by the appearances of democratic electoral processes. Being so, the elective public official has to have ample financial resources to maintain position through both election and incumbency. How does one get the funds? By means that are described “corrupt.” Basically, it involves control over the allocation of public funds in order to extract cuts for one’s political chest. Here, the favorite sort of public spending is on infrastructures because one is able to boast of impressive “concrete” achievements (such as building the largest coliseum in the region) and get a hefty cut (the SOP) since such projects are cost intensive. But there are other ways of patronal endowment such as the control of employment in government service. The “pork barrel” allocation had been the had been main source of patronal funds by lawmakers. Recently, legislation had been passed to institutionalize dole-out in aid of “elections”: the AYUDA program was promulgated just in time for the election campaign period.
While corruption in government is readily seen as bad, people tend to condone it as part of commonsense reality. And why not? This whole scheme of patronal politics is quite well-understood. Corruption is normalized as a necessity, a part of the territory. Here, may I propose a more theoretical formulation of this truism: Corruption in the Philippines is not so much a moral anomaly afflicting greedy politicians, but is an integral part of the more fundamental patronage culture of relations. By historical reasons, Philippine society continues to operate on clientelist structures, a carry-over from the past, even as it puts on appearances of democracy. Patronage and democracy are contradictory systems that we Filipinos try to mix-up. We create and organize the government according to democratic means, elections that is, but our elections are carried out according to patronal framework.
Patronage remains the substance wrapped in democratic trimmings. Piyudal sa loob, pero may panlabas na anyong demokatiko. Isang kabalintunaan.
Tireless but useless anti vote buying advocacy?
Already a part of the spectacle of every election are the impassioned campaigns among well-meaning advocates to uphold the dignity of the sagradong boto. We saw these campaigns at their most heroic during the snap elections of 1985, in those yakap-ballot box days, protecting the sacredness of the ballot with one’s life. Henceforth, the watchdog groups continued their advocacy to safeguard the gains of democracy post-EDSA. Through the years, however, the energy by which the campaign were carried out fizzled off. The emphasis too had been on vote buying, this practice being considered as the most resilient of the evils that beset clean and honest elections.
Now these campaigns appear to make no significant dent in solving the problem. For one thing they are not able to cover wide audiences, due to logistical shortage. And the impassioned exhortations routinely seem to fall on deaf ears, to the utter disappointment bafflement of these otherwise well-intent advocates. Based on the discussion above, let me offer some reasons for the failure.
Firstly, it assumes that the problem of vote buying is a problem of education. People engage in this abhorrent behavior because they lack the correct moral sense. They do not have the proper values. The assumption is that vote buying is simply a personal matter: individuals act without the correct cognitive basis for action. It fails to see the structural basis that is bigger than the individual: that vote buying is the outcome of the more fundamental system of patronage that permeates the entire fabric of society. When people engage in vote buying (candidates and voters alike), they do so not by the token adherence to democratic principles, but by the dictates of the clientelist or patronal scheme hard-wired into the Filipino culture.
Secondly, and in relations to the first, is the narrowing of the definition of vote buying to limit only to the “bakal” modality or the “ilimu-an” (or in-kind) distribution during the campaign period. It is assumed that vote buying is just the direct form, in disregard to the indirect kind that makes the other half of the patronage cycle. This is apparent if we examine the content of the typical voters’ education teaching material. There is lack of appreciation for the “big picture” that should afford a more complete understanding of the phenomenon.
Third is the patronizing stance (perhaps unwittingly) assumed the anti-vote buying advocates themselves. By hinging the campaign on such slogans as “vote intelligently” or “vote with your conscience,” the underlying argument is that the voters are not intelligent enough or are bereft of conscience. This is patently elitist that consigns the majority of the people to ignorance (or uneducated, that is why they need voters’ education), in contrast to the few enlightened ones (the learned voters’ educators). Worse is when voters are described as “selling their souls to the devil.” The use of the word “selling” (or “buying” for that matter) is deceptive. It assumes that the transaction between buyer and seller is a free-market thing where parties to the exchange exercise rational decision-making when to release their goods.
But let it be reiterated: vote buying, in both direct and indirect forms, is a patronage-clientelist exchange. It is not based on well calculated cost-benefit analysis, but on patronal relations: the assumed benevolent generosity of the patron and the gratefulness of the needy beneficiary. It is to be sure an exchange between unequals, of the rich and powerful and the poor and powerless. And for patronage system to work, this asymmetrical relationship has to be maintained. It meant sustaining a system that assures the patron the necessary wealth and power and for the clients to remain beholden to the patron. It is a socio-political ecosystem based on inequality. And politics (duly legitimated by elections) is the robust mechanism that produces and reproduces the system. To try to change this system by changing people’s hearts and minds (through voters’ education) is well intentioned but hopelessly naïve, inadequate, ineffective and unrealistic. It is no match to the robustness of the system.
Voters’ education, arguably, may be actually reinforcing the system. The popular slogan “ang imo sa bulsa, ang konsiyensiya sa balota” which tells people to accept money from candidates because anyway “it is money from the taxes people pay” subtly justifies corruption itself. On the part of the elective government official, there is nothing wrong with taking kickbacks or SOPs because anyway it will be given back to the people through vote-buying goods. On the part of the voter, there is nothing wrong with accepting money or goods from candidates; it is simply getting back what is theirs. So, everybody is happy and justified. The patronage system is perpetuated.
Final question: how do we get rid of vote buying? The answer is: not in the conduct of elections, not even by electing the “right” candidates. It is only by dismantling the very fundamental system that harbors vote buying of the direct and indirect modalities. It is about getting rid of the culture of patronage deeply rooted in Philippines society. But are we ready to give it up? We seem to hold it dear in our hearts. We are committed to its value of fealty to the benefactor, the benevolent parent-figure, the strong-man savior. Perhaps we do not realize it, but we enshrine patronage as the very essence of “Filipino culture.” If ever, what we must embark on is a massive, far-reaching and socially disrupting structural change. It is no easy thing to describe it or prescribe a formula to achieve it. What can be said now is that it is change that cannot be achieved through the regular interruption of our routines that comes every three years, elections that is, that indeed had become our national pastime so welcomed with great anticipation. An endeavor for fundamental change is not going to be a picnic, like an election, that is “More Fun in the Happy Island.”