Distracted by events appropriately tackled as headline fare on the six o’clock news, Tiktok, gossip columns and social media chat rooms, so enamored are we with show business and entertainment, that as we dwell inordinately long on relative trivialities, we are being robbed blind and we do not even know it.

The plunder that characterized the dictatorship years has returned with a vengeance and has overdosed on steroids. Albeit the permutations are now more deceptive and subtle. The personalities and perpetuators are not easily identifiable and that helps in the distractions where the latter are led by known personalities and media superstars.

Such focus is understandable. Most politics are kitschy controversies and entertainment, both engaging and distracting. Why else would our legislature be populated by two-bit actors, clowns and comedians, TV, radio and talk show personalities? Are these not the last persons on the earth who should be trusted with the economy? To validate, count sitting senators released from jail and simply out on bail. Count the entertainment industry personalities. Look at the charges against them. Now count the millions involved, unaccounted for and most likely lost forever.

Vetted and legitimately elected largely because of persona and contrived imagery, today aided by publicity and public relations campaigns, upon analysis, what we have in the legislature is a variety noontime show.

The public’s average collective educational level, the barbershop and beautician banter that for political pundits have turned into careers, the token amount of critical thinking a majority applies to complex issues, and finally, our propensity to elect leaders based on either pecuniary or personality politics make us the perfect victims.

Allow us to cite controversies we might have forgotten as we now must tackle yet another issue that plunders a much larger amount than erstwhile thieving has in the previous years.

Maharlika Fund, PhilHealth

As the Maharlika fund controversy was developing during this administration’s honeymoon period when critics were open to granting the new president exceptional leeway, the initial focus of the debate was among economists and academicians who raised the issue of its legitimacy as a sovereign fund capitalized from surpluses. Such requisite capitalization was aligned with the textbook definition of a sovereign fund and the comparative performance of similar funds then created by far more prolific and stable economies had become a benchmark especially critical during a global recession. 

The surplus argument was the most valid counterpoint since the Philippine economy had none. While gross domestic product (GDP) was gradually recovering from its fall during the previous administration, an illusory “dead cat bounce” or one that remained in intensive care still fell short of the minimum required to seed a legitimate sovereign fund.

Almost unanimously, even as Maharlika’s principal proponent, Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., had practically debuted what was still then called the Maharlika Investment Fund in Davos, Switzerland, professionals, economists, and academicians raised the alarms citing high-level corruption, losses, and failures as well as the absence of surpluses in our economy.

The global failures cited were frighteningly massive. So were the levels of corruption that accompanied the failures, albeit admittedly corruption was not a necessary factor in the huge losses inflicted on those economies. Had the same amount of relative failure been inflicted on the Philippines because of the intransigent bullheadedness of officials backing this dangerous proposition, then aggravated by the absence of true surpluses, ours would simply be a latent version of the familiar government-instigated plunder that rechanneled billions of funds to unbudgeted whimsical endeavors.

For most of the public, Maharlika’s detractors, however meritorious, do not fit the mold of a popular media personality where cerebral merit surrenders to the show business-like glow and glamor of those the public consider as glitterati. Hence, intelligent criticism of the Marcos Maharlika modus paled against the blinding endorsement of the jet-setting, party animal still then enjoying the cliché presidential honeymoon period. 

Economists, academicians, technocrats, or the intelligentsia do not comprise the influential glitterati. This unfortunate aberration is present in the continuing and deliberate draining of billions from the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) on the eve of the 2025 campaign period. Personalities like the brilliant Dr. Cielo Magno, the expertise of former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, or the passionate and driven Dr. Anthony Leachon are exceptions and not the rule.

[ANALYSIS] PilferHealth

Personality politics

It all boils down to the cult of personality politics — an unfortunate curse that smothers issues we should be focused on. Note the enduring media shelf-life of the following distractions that sidetrack us from a meaningful discourse of issues that matter.

Given Tiktok as an educational medium, note the relative mileage dedicated to memes and trivialities surrounding a lawyer and his traveling partner that often displaces meaningful discourse on the establishment and protection of human trafficking and slavery, money-laundering and illegal gambling havens, by Commission on Elections — accredited and elected local officials.

[Rappler Investigates] Dangers of TikTok

Note the Duran Duran multi-million private sideshow as just another updated episode and part of a continuing series of political ruling class impunity, callousness, insensitivity, and excesses that hide violations of Republic Act 3019 on both sides of the funder and spender picket fence.

Note also the long-playing albeit understandable demonization and preemptive campaign to defang a prospective threat to the presidency that hides the absence of credible, viable and potent choices for leadership both currently and for prospective presidential incumbencies for the coming decades.

Note how inordinate media focus on the depravity of a cult leader, human trafficker and accused sexual deviant who enjoyed a congressional telecommunications franchise hides the folly behind governments franchise powers, its underlying cronyism and special treatment granted by law enforcement agencies.

Prospects

As we enter the initial stages of an election where we might win back what have been plundered amidst these distractions, allow us to analyze the prospects of change. 

Analyze the composition of the current legislature. Now analyze the strengths of the Marcos senatorial ticket for the 2025 midterm elections. The public loves to be entertained. Admittedly this is essential among our cultural coping mechanisms that accounts for our resiliency. Unfortunately, our media-savvy celebrity crooks know this and take advantage of it. They apply it both in their self-serving popularity campaigns as well as in their hate campaigns where challengers are set as villains. 

Contrast the Marcos senatorial ticket with the Makabayan bloc’s slate whose candidates were chosen based on sectoral representation and the compelling issues of unemployment, poverty, injustice, human rights abuses, and agricultural and industrial productivity. 

While we resorted to extremism to prove our point, we likewise see where the handful of traditional and centrist veteran opposition candidates come from a relatively elite background. As they challenge the status quo, the unfortunate reality is that they have also surrendered to its kitsch, personality politics and cheap Tiktok entertainment to peddle themselves.

So, break a leg and let the show begin. – Rapppler.com

Dean de la Paz is a former investment banker and managing director of a New Jersey-based power company operating in the Philippines. He is the chairman of the board of a renewable energy company and is a retired Business Policy, Finance, and Mathematics professor. He collects Godzilla figures and antique tin robots.