Romanticizing the AngKap

I voted for the 3 AngKap candidates only. Yes, I know they would not make a dent in this election but I voted for them anyway.

Actually, I have no choice. How can I vote for GO candidates who seek blessings from someone like Erap? How can I vote for Villar or Roco, the candidates I consider from GO, when they sit right beside and approve the likes of Trillanes, Lacson and Escudero?

On the other hand, how can I vote for some credible TU candidates like Arroyo or Angara when they approve of Oreta and Sotto to join them? I would have voted for Pangilinan but with the rest of GO and TU, I never know where he stands on many issues. In fact, I know they have consistently skirted on real issues. Are they for Chacha? Are they for population control? Do they approve of the EVAT? Do they support an impeachment of PGMA? Are they for anything at all? All of them did practically nothing in the past for the good of the country, when they can. How can they even ask me for my vote?

And as it happened, the AngKap did lost (or are losing) their senate bid. Yes, it is expected. But to say that AngKap won in some way is trying to romaticize what is lost. It is obvious that there are lessons learned for AngKap but to romanticize them into some sort of great achievement is doing it overboard. They might end up with a million votes each, enough to land them somewhere in the 25 to 26 rank. Yes, those one million votes would have been real votes from real supporters and could be better than those 15million++ bandwagon votes for Loren and Chiz. But to tell the world how good that 1M votes are is like focusing on that white paper dirt in reverse, it would distract AngKap from doing what it should do next.

I am for positive thinking but not too much as to forget the real lessons. The AngKap fared low in marketing themselves. They did not get good tri-media mileage nor were they able to make good use of other media technologies such as the internet and the cellphone (If there were 1M voters for AngKap, those people would have forwarded a nice good cellphone or email plea to vote for PSB if anyone had started such). Even in the Catholic church itself from which they are trying to establish their base, they remained largely unknown. To many, they remained to be nuisance candidates. Simply put, they are not taken seriously.

But there could indeed be 1M serious votes for the AngKap, meaning there are 1M potential volunteers out there. A failure to make use and mobilize those 1M voters soon will make them dismiss AngKap the next time around. It is now up to Pacheco et al to make a campaign to know and convert those voters into volunteers.