“First of all, what wrong with giving [money] to children? They cannot vote. That’s not vote-buying. And that was money for them to buy camote.”

This was presidential candidate Manny Villar speaking, or at least how he was quoted by the reporters, regarding the handing out of P20 to children while on the campaign trail in Batangas last week.

So what’s wrong with these statements?

I’ll use the method of discourse analysis to examine the presidential candidate’s actuations. Discourse analysis is extremely useful in unraveling the many assumptions underlying the speech acts of candidates in their ambitious journey to political stardom. It calls attention to what was said and not said. It reveals to us the values held by the speaker. It makes us realize that Philippine election is really a contest of interpretation about the Filipino voter, especially the poor Filipino voter, and a battle to realize what should be and can be our norms as a nation.

The act in question is the giving of money to children during one campaign sortie. The rationale given: they were hungry (he wanted to help); they are not voters (therefore he did not commit vote buying).

Villar’s logic has two dimensions, moral and legal. The moral assertion is that his intentions were pure: the children were hungry, he wanted to help them so he gave them the P20 to buy camote. Note that he used the camote figuratively. The camote is a metaphor in the same order as the galunggong, They have been typecast as poor people’s food.

It is not only Villar who has been accused of vote-buying. Two similar incidents involved another presidential candidate, Erap Estrada. In Bulacan, Erap handed out a P200 bill to a mother who had approached him with a sick child in tow. In Negros Occidental, his campaign manager, Ernesto Maceda, gave P1,000 to an old woman who had affectionately kissed Erap.

We already have a name for the type of persona to which the acts cited above characteristically belong: the TRAPO, shorthand for the traditional Filipino politician. Trapos have a very utilitarian appreciation of the poor. During elections, they cater to the primordial needs of the poor people and manipulate the latter’s sense of utang na loob in order to win votes. Poor people, they believe, will always fall for the generous man, and are endeared to him by this material bond.

Trapos know that a dole-out will not rescue the poor from poverty. They know it encourages a relationship of dependency which also hurts their pockets. They know that feeding into these assumed expectations of the poor has made the business of elections very costly. But they do not rise above the trap, and election after election, realize and reproduce the same assumptions, the same actuations, and generally the same outcome.

Trapos have a one-sided view of the law: it’s there to work for them. When in danger of getting caught, the traditional politician typically wiggles out of the situation by pouncing on a technicality. The trapo is adept in making palusot.

Legalistically, Villar defended himself: They are children, they do not vote. As to the giving out of scholarships at the Pasay concert, this was but a formality, since the several million pesos-worth of scholarship fund had been awarded in January, before the start of the campaign period.

Erap’s legal defense: it was my campaign manager who gave the money, “di ako. … Ang kandidato ang bawal.”

Vote-buying as formulated in the Omnibus Election Code is any act of “giving, offering or promising money or anything of value to induce anyone to vote for or against any candidate.” Does the law exempt children at an election rally from being the beneficiary, permit the campaign manager to be the handler, and distinguish between the announcement and the actual awarding? They may find a hole big enough to squirm out of, but these candidates have already defiled the spirit of the law, which is to stop the prevalence of the rule of “gold” (in the triad that includes guns and goons), and erode the bond of patronage that subordinates the poor electorate to the candidate.

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We should similarly examine the assumptions and values embedded in Mikey Arroyo’s and Angelo Reyes’s actuations regarding their reported nomination as party list candidates. Arroyo defends the possibility as a matter of birthright while refusing to even identify the group. Reyes sees no compulsion to give up his Cabinet post until the last day of filing of nominees, even though the campaign period has already began.

What assumptions do these two public officials have about the public’s moral expectations on their leaders? They don’t seem to think highly of the public’s standards. What privileges are they claiming as public servants? What is their attitude toward the law?

All these ethics-related questions hounding the electoral exercise tell us that our elections are more importantly a contest of interpretation of what’s right and wrong in our politics, and a race to the finish as to who gets to set the norms on which we will build -- or further destroy -- our nation.

E-mail: mcf178@yahoo.com