Pinoys Relish Election Eve than the Xmas Eve

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Nope, I would not dwell on what my columnist Arnel Montemayor in Northern Watch Newspaper wrote and titled - son of a gun - : Christmas Season is for the Pagans.

I would dwell about the economics of the Yuletide and the joy it brings versus those recipients of vote buying in the eve of the election in the Flip Land.

Santa Clause (left) shows the bills he would give to the kids with good behavior while the other photo shows Filipino voters relish the thousands of pesos each of them receive from those candidates who run into public office.

In a huddle with my eldest son Jigger, he told me about the traffic snarls going to Baguio City and  Metro Manila especially in the viaduct in Bulacan where a lane of the North Luzon Express Way (NLEX) is being repaired since time immemorial and the hell hole called EDSA.

“One of the guys I met in the party hosted by Congressman (Eric) Acuna two nights ago told me that his friend and family left Pangasinan at noon of that day but arrived at the international airport in Pasay City at 9 o’clock in the evening,” I said.

Normally, a day trip from Pangasinan to the airport could be more or less four hours.

“That’s the bad side of a Christmas season,” I quipped to my son.

The good side is a bullish economy where people come in droves to the province from various parts in and out of the country and spend their monies in the place they visited. That’s multiplier effects to those lechoneros, fruit vendors like those bilog-bilog and other sellers. People in the province earned money where they spend it too for other people to earn.

“The spending these Christmas including the dollar remittances of Filipinos from different countries in the world buttress the Philippine Peso versus other denominations (P55 versus U.S $1 now where it was P58 to U.S $1 in October this year) are no match to the multiplier effects in the eve of the election last May,” I opined.

“Why?” Jigger posed.

“Look at those recipients of the pakurong (vote buying in Pangasinan), one mayoralty candidate in Dagupan City spent P4,000 per voter that I computed to be more or less half-a-billion pesos among the more than 100, 000 grateful voters”.

Doggonit! I could not fathom a more than one hundred thousand pesos a month salary for a Hizzoner to receive from the government while throwing like crazy those half-a -billion doughs to the voters.

Because of the wild circulation of monies in the city, train liked queues to fast food establishments like McDonald, Jollibee, and others were ubiquitous in May 9 – the election day – and the day thereafter.

In the May 2019 local election, some of these food stores closed shop in the dusk of the election day because their stocks could not supply the sea of humanity – mostly composed of the great unwashed wielding thousands of pesos – who were ready to buy what they offered.

 While seeing ecstatic folks – including the Pastor’s wife - crowing to me the P7,000 they each received from the two mayoralty candidates, I told all and sundry that election in the Philippines could shame the joy brought by the Christmas season to the Filipinos – whose morality has been long already sold to the Devil.

(Send comments to totomortz@yahoo.com)