Hear, Hear: a podcast about what 'voter education' misses
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Hi I am Akiko Ishii and now you are listening to hear hear rap Lear's best investigative and opinion pieces episode one voter education by Christine reynaldo, Christine Reynaldo is an activist and PhD candidate in cultural studies currently based in Hong kong. A research relates broadly to populism, post colonial democracy and the politics of the governed in the Philippines and among transnational migrant workers. So for this episode, I will read one of her works which is what voter education mrs about the problem of electoral politics lately, posts celebrating biden's win in the U. S. Presidential elections have flooded my social media timelines. These posts suggest that if americans can vote their populist out of the presidential office, then so can Filipinos, hashtag Holland 2022 trended people encouraged each other to register now and vote later. Some hoped to volunteer for potential opposition candidates or spearhead voter education campaigns and then Senator Pacquiao assumed the leadership of the PDP Laban Party, fueling existing suspicions that the sportsman come legislator would run for the country's top post in 2022 groans echoed in virtual chambers, but kaos seemed to embody the ills afflicting Philippine elections, celebrity politics, conservatism, artisan apportion ism and the competitive advantage of belonging to the ruling party to eat. Touting the importance of educating one social inferiors about voting intelligently went viral walk, twitter, had a feast over the lettuce the verses, but button to binary. I felt my frustration mounting as a scrawled through these posts. Civil society tends to assume and reinforce the idea so common in liberal circles that the problem with our democracy is that voters are misinformed, they lack education, they distrust oligarchic or biased mainstream media. New technologies overwhelmed their capacity to assess the hyper abundance of information circulated in the digital sphere. From this diagnosis comes the prescription more voter education. This understanding of Philippine politics effectively frames populism as a social disease and do 30s mo as the problem itself, rather than as a particularly visible expression of long standing problems. More worryingly, it limits our imaginations of democracy, political society and our place in it. Voter education can only go so far when it is the entire electoral system that needs reforming so that its institutions are better equipped to deal with the reality of extreme social inequality and the elite capture of state power. Example of reforms include strengthening mechanisms for auditing campaign expenses, and punishing violators, regulating the use of digital media in campaigns, and reading the party list system of parties that don't genuinely represent marginalized sectoral interests. It seems to me that lobbying for institutional reform and regulation rather than seeking to influence individual voter preferences would more effectively improve our democratic systems because we can educate voters all we want. But if the structural factors don't change, then the situation would parallel the discourse of resilience and its emphasis on individualized risk and responsibility in the face of calamity. While institutional reform is important, we should also not let our imagination of collective political life becomes so impoverished that it would primarily hinge on elections every few years because democracy is not about playing a high stakes betting game. The ideology of electoral politics presumes and gives the appearance of political equality one person one vote. It also assumes, or hopes that people vote in their best interests. Example for nationals progress. However, the same ideology fuels the civil society discourse of baba tante, which blames the poor and ignorant masses for bad electoral outcomes that installed corrupt and incompetent drop us in government. What this ideology obscures or the realities of a sharply and even playing field. On the supply side, the electorate is talk with members of the same elite families to vote for some. Politicals are just worse than others, but they generally represent their own class interests. The game of musical chairs is often evoked to symbolize electoral politics, whereby public offices are passed among rotating members of the ruling class. Another metaphor public office of family, hair loom inheritance like land. This supply side problem implies that even if Filipinos had clean elections, we would still have a little chance of getting leaders that are in propose On the demand side, consider class demographics classes ACC the upper and middle classes account for less than 10% of the adult population. Take again, the perspective of the enlightened middle class, seeking to educate the masses as if the poor were not politically aware to vote for candidates with concrete plans and administrative competitive sees and not for populists who use spectacles to enchant the masses. Winning the numbers game of elections seems near impossible with the inequities that structure our social reality in mind. The ideology of electoral politics seems like a sham used to legitimize a political system that facilitates the legal, orderly and intergenerational transfer of power among dynastic elites. But what the poor will know is that whoever sits in power, the consequences are much the same for them. Some travels are just worse than others, so better vote for the trouble they like or have a better chance of receiving help from take for instance, the administration of former president Ninoy Aquino Lau did for its anti corruption drive, which is the only good weed, bureaucratic efficiency and sounded public policy that drove record economic growth and ask who benefit from that growth, Who is served by development. My experiences working with the labor unions, welfare activists and other precarious collective formations of migrant filipino domestic workers in Hong kong joining in their negotiations and contentions with the state have taught me that democracy is not about elections. What about everyday political participation? The activists in my circle see Philippine elections as not only made me, but also ineffective in forming a government capable of addressing structural inequalities through long term plans, faithfully executed by successive administrations. The problem as they see it has to do less with technocratic competencies and more with political will example, the unwillingness of elites to institute progressive reforms in the public interest. Thus for them, the primary though not the only arena of political struggle is not in parliament, but industry. It's the systemic feels that plug Philippine society demand no quick remedies. Even with a change in leadership, the bureaucracy corrupted by Duterte's personal ist IQ and authoritarian style of governance would remain the same. Dynasties would still dominate the government, locking the passage or effective implementation of progressive legal reforms. This is why relentless political pressure from below is so important. We should do more than focus on the game of elections and hope that a better administration would solve present democratic crisis. We can help deepen our democracy by joining or supporting grassroots activist organizations that strive to organize and empower marginalized groups and at risk communities so that the silenced majority can more effectively fight for their collective interests. At the very least we should listen to those whose very lives are shaped by social insecurity and political struggle. In listening May we also be educated about matters that our privileges blind as to activist politics is founded on the awareness that the equal rights supposedly guaranteed by the law is ineffective in practice, that some people's enjoyment of the rights depends on others deprivation of theirs and that where the protection of rights is not guaranteed, Those whose rights are most at risk must continually fight to claim them. This struggle, which is political, economic and cultural all at once on various fronts, demands. Grassroots organization for resource sharing, mutilate collective empowerment and effective movements to hold power to account on an everyday basis, as in living through this pandemic, strengthening the herd is our best option for collective survival. So that is all. For the first episode of Hear, Hear rappers, best investigative and opinion. He says again, I am Akiko Ishii, and thank you so much for listening.