Vote nut

 THE INC vote is a certainty.

The Iglesia ni Cristo brethren vote as one. More from personal reading now – as I am no INC affiliate – than hermeneutics is that one church, one-vote dogma grounded on Romans 15:6: “That you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In all things, not the least in choosing the people’s leaders, is God glorified. Alleluia! 
No certainty though – in winning, is the INC vote. In local contests, the bloc votes are no surefire for electoral success. A case in point is Oca Rodriguez’s victory in his congressional rematch in 1995 against the INC-backed Didi Domingo. 
And then, there was the incumbent INC-propped Mark Lapid finishing dead last in the 2007 gubernatorial polls against proclaimed winner Eddie Panlilio, and recount victor Lilia Pineda.
Elections being a matter of addition and multiplication makes the INC vote a plus-plus factor nonetheless. 
Thus, its being a much-coveted prize among all candidates.
The Catholic vote is an improbability. Not the nullity it was readily dismissed to be after the bishop-blasted Joseph Estrada handily won the presidency in 1998. 
“Vote for persons who morally, intellectually, and physically show themselves capable of inspiring the whole nation toward a hopeful future.” So reverberated the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ pastoral statement from pulpits throughout the land. 
The not-so-subtle inference of moral wrongs on the womanizer, gambler, drinker and un-colleged Estrada not so much fallen on deaf ears as glossed over by the sheen of the Erap persona on the silver screen.
But there is such a thing as “Catholic influence” – that which Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile raised at the time of the deliberations on the Reproductive Health Bill.
This is much pronounced at the parish levels, especially in the rural areas where the cura parocco exercises the highest moral ascendancy and thereby the greatest influence in community life.   
So, who among the cerrado Catolico would dare even to conceive a questioning thought against the very voice of God emanating from the pulpit? 
Roma locuta est, causa finita est. Rome has spoken, the case is closed. The definitive end to all arguments of the medieval era is not extinct as the Borgia pope but as much extant today as Benedict’s infallibility. 
To a considerable majority of the Catholics, that is. That which so-called freethinkers have long ridiculed and despised as the miserably blinded faithful and unthinking fanatics.
Think and rethink: The intelligent vote is a fallacy.   
Why do we vote for those whom we vote? 
Family. The candidate is mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, cousin to the nth degree of consanguinity dating to the discovery of the Philippines.
Friendship. The candidate is a childhood friend, barkada, friend of the wife, friend of a brother, friend of a cousin, friend of an uncle, friend of a friend, friend of a friend of a friend…
Favors. The candidate paid for the hospitalization of a family member, funeral expenses for a relative, school tuition of a child. Whence rises too the commodification of the vote, of the right of suffrage reduced to the transactional, to buy-and-sell, to trade or pawn.                  
Always visceral, very rarely cerebral. That’s the vote hereabouts. 
So, we ask again: In the pursuit of our electoral exercises do we ever, as we should, to quote Baruch Spinoza, “… use in security all (our) endowments, mental and physical, and make free use of (our) reason”?
So we vote nut. So, we are the nut. 

(Reprinted from Zona Libre, 7 February 2013)