NOTA

IT TOOK Sunday’s presidential debate for me to finally decide whom to vote for in May: NOTA – none of the above.

Aye, to tag the debate “presidential” is to debase the honor and demean the dignity inherent in the term, intelligent discourse having left the campus of the University of the Philippines-Cebu – ah, such irony – even before the event started, with a simple question of rules wasting one full hour to resolve. One rule, to be exact: whether a candidate can bring notes to the podium, which Comelec has, even before the first debate, already ruled out, but for some reason or the other, the carrying station Channel 5 did not know. No-brainer there.

Alas, all the rules that make the very definition of debate – reasoned argument through disciplined presentation, logical consistency, factual accuracy, and civility among the debaters – buried in the highly-charged verbal engagement right at its commencement.

More than the presentation of their position on varied issues of national interest thereby affording the public an informed, if not enlightened, choice, the debate was seized by the presidential pretenders as an opportunity for mutual annihilation. Thus, the skewed arguments and non-sequiturs peppered with name-callings and vapid one-liners. Thus, the three honorable men and one esteemed woman reducing themselves to the absurdity of bungling schoolyard brawlers, unfit to be elected even as Row 5 monitor. Thus, a farce was all it was: pure entertainment, enlightenment only by accident.   

What the presidentiables passed off as valid arguments make the very examples of the Material Fallacies of Reasoning any student of my day learned in Philosophy 101. Yes, the very things we were warned against, lest we fell into nonsensicality.  

The fallacy of emotive language in Rodrigo Duterte calling Mar Roxas a “fraud,” questioning anew his being a Wharton School of Business graduate, even as media has long reported that the school has vouched for the veracity of Roxas’ claims.

Roxas, in turn, minting “Duterte Justice” to mean “kung ano ang nasa isip niya, kahit hindi totoo, ‘yan ang kanyang papaniwalaan, ‘yan ang kanyang gagawin.”

Jejomar Binay calling Roxas and Grace Poe “disipulo ito ni Goebbels” referencing the Nazi propaganda minister who memorialized the power of the lie, thus: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Applied to allegations of corruption against him which often repeated by his rivals may be believed by the public as proven truths. Aren’t they?

All that name-calling also categorized under the classic argumentum ad hominem – focus more on the person, less on the issue, especially to the point of ridicule.

More ad hominem with touches of argumentum ad misericordiam to tug at the heartstrings with Binay: “Magtiwala po kayo. Uulitin ko po, ako, man of action ako, kaya nga ako minahal sa Makati.”

The fallacy of “contrary to fact conditional error” in Roxas’ broken record-spinning of his Yolanda role as it alters reality on the ground and then draws conclusion from that alteration. He did good in Yolanda?

On Poe’s citizenship issue, Binay: "Basta ikaw, hindi ka tunay na Pilipino kasi ikinahiya mo. When you took your oath of allegiance for you to be naturalized as a citizen, [you said], 'I abjure ikinahihiya ko ang pinanggalingan [ko].’"

Poe countered with an ignoratio elenchi or irrelevance by likening her case to the  millions of Filipinos who aspired to get higher-paying jobs abroad, thus: "Sinasabi mo, ikaw ang number one na nagpro-protekta sa mga OFW pero sinasabi mong ang isang nakatira sa ibang bansa, hindi na pwedeng bumalik dito para manilbihan?"

Binay’s response: “Madame Senator, hindi po kayo OFW.”

Right, as OFWs do not renounce their Filipino citizenship to work abroad, unlike Poe who swore allegiance to the American flag and became US citizen.

Cornered, Poe could only resort to more ignoratio elenchi: “Hindi sa kulay yan, nasa pagmamahal. Nandito ka nga sa bansa, pero nangulimbat ka naman.”

On accusations of selective justice in the Aquino administration, Roxas resorting to argumentum ad verecundiam – appeal to authority: “LP, non-LP, lahat ay nakakasuhan, natatanggal sa puwesto, ‘yan and record, ‘yan ang totoo, hindi po ‘yun kathang-isip.” By whose record? By whose truth? By whose authority, but the Aquino administration’s, duh!

The way the presidentiables conducted themselves during the debate, they only succeeded in living up to yet another fallacy: tu quoque – “you too” – as in the Kapampangan “Pare-parehu tamu mu qng acbac nang Hudas (we are all the same in Judas’ skewer).”

And what can one make of Duterte’s “kung takot kang pumatay ng tao at  mamatay, you cannot be president”  impacted as Roxas’ proof of character weakness?

Of Binay promising to pass the Freedom of Information Bill once elected when he did not even have the guts to face the Senate probe of allegations of corruption?

Of Poe’s fantastic inter-island bridges in the Visayas, multiple dams in Cebu, ballistic missiles to counter the China threat, amid the sore lack of funds, if not near bankruptcy, of government?

Of Roxas’ robotic refrains of continuing the discredited daang matuwid?  

Finally, of Duterte saying “sincerely” that Binay is better qualified for the presidency than him?

With the mockery of reason, the negation of logic that was Sunday’s debate, the farce that is the presidential contest this year has played out. 

And I cannot bring myself to take any part of it.