It took a while for me to warm up to the idea that you need to vote.
I like politics, but I am not the type that would risk relationships because I love a certain dude or dudette to win a top seat.
You can be a supporter of Donald Trump and at the same time, condemn gun violence.
You can be a Democrat and at the same time cringe at the woke movement.
Notice that I am using the American version of our politics because I don't really want to talk about OUR kind of politics.
With that said, I saw a lot of shocked faces that in my over four decades of existence, this is the first time I marched to COMELEC and claimed my right to vote.
For starters, I exhausted my right to do whatever the hell I please. When I turned 18, the last thing on my mind was to march to a precinct. Then when as the years went by, I procrastinated to the point that I missed the deadline because I got sick, I had to work overtime, I had a personal matter, and I just didn't want to go out.
And then in 2009, I got sick and tired of the whole Dilawan deal.
Politics was needlessly tough for people in the middle.
I guess I saw 2024 as a return to normalcy.
Friends and family have blurred their proverbial barriers, thanks and no thanks to the pandemic. When that hell on earth happened and everyone was stuck in their houses, I doubt if anyone thought about the color of their shirts.
At the moment, Philippine politics is back to its normal self. By normal, I mean it's like WWE's Royal Rumble. At the moment, everyone wants to headline and win the proverbial Wrestlemania. On the road to the event, there are a lot of things happening and friends are now enemies.
While I still have the perception that all politicians have their own agendas, I believe that some agendas are meant for the betterment of their people.
Here's a prediction: I will march to my precinct after I have eaten my lunch and then I will either go to a nearby watering hole to drink coffee or drink the bottle of Fundador inside my room AFTER I cast my vote.
Rather than predicting the winners, I will most definitely choose the candidates who I think would excel in their jobs and at the same time, have the best chance to win the position.
At the end of the day, you give the vote to the politicians with the most pull. Philanthropists aren't necessarily the best politicians because they have this idea in their heads of this utopia that doesn't really exist.
Politics are for politicians who know how to fight in that kind of environment.