Voting is like buying a lotto ticket

By Al S. Mendoza

WE choose only 12 senators in tomorrow’s election, May 13.

And yet, there are 62 candidates.

Will the 50 losers sulk? Cry?

That’s the trouble with most of us. 

Election has become almost a magnet that it attracts people to run like light to moth once in three years since 1989.

Ours is a race that loves to join almost every election.

Did you know that a hundred or so had been declared nuisance candidates in the senatorial derby?

But if I were the Comelec, I would not have disqualified a single candidate.

This is a free country.

But anyway, that’s all water under the bridge now as the saying goes.

I have confirmed it many times over:  Some run for the fun of it; others for the funds of it.

The fun part of it, vey forgivable.  Just for kicks that’s why some jerks filed their certificates of candidacy. 

But to those who did it for the funds of it?

They aren’t jerks but downright crooks of the first degree.

They shamelessly approach their hapless friends for financial help and, most of the time if not oftentimes, they succeed in scooping up some money.

The givers do it out of pity.  For old times’ sakes.  What’s a hundred bucks for a friend, anyways?

We know who they are—the parasites.

They don’t deserve pity at your precinct tomorrow.

Aside from the 12 senators, the Filipino people will also elect tomorrow some 243 representatives, 81 governors, 81 vice governor and 776 provincial board members.

Also to be elected are 145 city mayors, 1,489 municipal mayors, 145 city vice mayors, 1,489 municipal vice mayors and 13,540 councilors.

There are 6 unopposed candidates for governor, 11 vice governor, 159 mayor, 211 vice mayor and 27 representative.

Again, I will vote in Mangatarem, my beloved hometown.

It’s been that way since I started voting in 1992.

And my answer to my Metro Manila-based friends every time they ask me the question: ”Why vote in Mangatarem when you live in Quezon City?”

Another of my humble ways of showing my love for my birthplace.

I share a special kinship with the candidates of my hometown.  They are not only like brothers to me. 

I also feel like I am reaffirming my love for my own roots each time I vote in my hometown.

Like the others that I vote for—senatorial, congressional and provincial bets—I don’t mind seeing my ballot go to waste when the winners turn out to be crooks, rotten.

Voting is gambling, as in like buying a lotto ticket.  One is never sure.  We can only hope for the best.

And if the elected mayor that I had voted for in my town turns out to be a sonafabitch, I won’t mind, too.

At least he is still my own sonafabitch.

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