You know that a politician is
an “epal” (credit grabber) when you see his pictures in billboards announcing
project status or continuously making a scene just to grab headlines and
attention for the sake of name recall.
However, “epalism” has reached new heights where pasting of politicians’
images is no longer exclusive to billboards and bulletin news, you see their
faces on many things as if they are peddling merchandise items to promote a
certain brand like t-shirts, ballpens, and even dining sets. However, one mayor up the ante and decided to
elevate “epalism” to newer heights.
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| Photo credit goes to Rappler.com |
According to a report in
Rappler.com, a mayor in one of the towns of Rizal province was accused of
abusing power and inserted his own image alongside with that of the senior
citizens card holder. Senior citizens of
Pililla, Rizal have to contend with seeing Mayor Leandro Masikip's bigger picture
along with their images each time they present their cards to avail of
discounts. An ordinary concerned citizen
of the municipality of Pililla has brought this attention by writing an open
letter and it went viral on Facebook. What
made De la Cruz mad was that the mayor was suspended on allegation of forgery
while he discovered this mischief of Mayor Masikip. Jasper de la Cruz lamented that senior
citizen’s ID is not a political poster and should not bear the image of
concurrent mayor or any elected or appointed government officials.
Many Filipinos would
definitely agree with Mr. Jasper de la Cruz that this new “epalism” from Mayor
Masikip is definitely hard to stomach.
Personally, being an “epal” is a sign of insecurity and lack of
confidence when it comes to achievements.
This only proves that he does not have life altering social projects for
his constituents; his programs probably are more on creating dependency to
politicians which is perhaps the standard operating procedure when it comes to a politician’s projects.
However, the blame is not
limited to politicians. For as long as the constituents will ask anything from “erection”
to resurrection and from “bawang” (garlic) to repair of “siwang ng bahay”
(house repairs), there will be no projects that will make a huge impact on the
lives of constituents. Trivial requests like those previously mentioned will
just eat up the budget allotted per politicians. For as long as the Filipino voters will not
shun politics of patronage, the “epals” will continue to multiply.
Read the full story from
this link.
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