This practice of rent-seeking that has persisted to this day has decreased public resources, degraded the political impartiality of the civil service, and diminished accountability,c competence, and efficiency among public officials and employees. Whether rich or poor, families in the Philippines are clannish and tend to give greater premium to family loyalty than patriotism. As a result “we imagine ourselves foremost as brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers of our families instead of as citizens of a nation.”

Compared to family and friends, government, especially at the national level, is remote and distant most especially to people in the countryside. Even when national officials happen to be honest and efficient, kith and kin are nearer, dearer, and more reliable when it comes to fulling one's needs and wants. The kinship network is relied upon for employment, money, medial help, education, and socialization, among others, especially in hard times. More importantly, according to McCoy, the family strives to pass on to the next generation its “name, honor, lands, capital, and values.” The kinship network even expands to include acquaintances, peers and superiors with whom one can be bound through rituals of initiation like baptism with its potentially numerous sponsors, kumpares and kumares..

Elections

The history of elections has not brought national government closer to the vast majority of the sons and daughters of the soil and the descendants of the dumpsites. Nor has it made the State better or more effective than the kinship network as a provider of employment, health care, quality education, and social mobility. It comes as no surprise then that many citizens do not see elections as means to strengthen democracy or to institutionalize honest government.

For the very poor, elections are occasions for the family to get some money or goods for the temporary relief of misery. According to the 2005 IPC study, although the poor “agree that vote-buying is not right,” and even see its link to corruption in elective office, “they will accept the money [and] still vote according to their own preferences, on the condition that there will be no mechanism for checking their actual vote.”

This “strategic pragmatism” is not unreasonable. After all, what is wrong with being able to exercise one's democratic right freely while at the same time deriving a personal benefit from it? Never mind if, for the candidate or politician who buys the vote, this is a form of treachery. As the study points out, this kind of thinking is similar to gambling, as “money is accepted on the wager that one will not be caught voting for someone else.”

For many voters, elections are primarily means for establishing or expanding connections especially with elective officials. The latter are expected to reciprocate the efforts of the voters and supporters by acting as mediators who can provide access to government services and opportunities, such as temporary jobs, for supporters and their kith and kin. As political analyst Joel Rocamora says, “If you do not believe that government makes a difference in your day-to-day existence, why should you care who you vote for except for accumulating utang na loob (debt of gratitude) from possible sources of direct assistance”?

Since most of the poor have seen little or no improvement in their social condition from one generation to the next, elections have become no different from their popular games of chance. Sociologist John Carroll, S.J., who has worked with the poor extensively, explains it this way: “For the poor, election is like a cockfight, you watch it with interest, you try to keep out of the way, or you might get hurt. You might hope to win a peso or two by betting on the right cock but you don't expect it to change your lief. The only life that gets to change is that of one of the cocks. You do not expect it to change your lives.”

Picturing an election as a game of chance helps people to accept and delight in its desirable and undesirable dimensions, as well as its rational and irrational qualities. As the PIC study says, this mindset allows voters to enjoy the spectacle of the campaign period, and to accept the outcome of the elections – whether their candidate wins or loses – as being part of the game.

Denis T. Gonzalez, Ph.D. is the project director of "How to Win an Election" and former director of the Center for Social Policy of the Ateneo School of Government (ASG). He is also the Chairman of the National Book Development Board. He has a doctorate in Theology from the Catholic University of Louvain (KUL), Belgium, and teaches Public Sector Ethics and Business Ethics at the ASG and the Graduate School of Business