Why I Hate Politics

Back in High School

“Did you ever look at a picture of yourself and see a stranger in the background?
It makes you wonder how many people have pictures of you… How many moments of other people’s lives we’ve been in.
Were we part of someone’s life when their dream came true?
Or were we there when their dreams died?
Did we keep trying to get in, as if we were somehow destined to be there?
Or did the shot take us by surprise?
Just think, you could be a big part of someone else’s life and not even know it.”
-Lucas Scott

Just this weekend, my cousins and aunt and uncle came to relish the city of Iloilo. Coincidently, my mom and dad were in Manila because my dad would leave for work overseas. He’s a seaman. That would leave my sister alone at home.


Let me fill you in: My aunt who visited the city and me isn’t married to my uncle (who visited their house in Mandurriao in Iloilo City). That made a total of two families, excluding my sister, whom I had spent the recent weekend with.


Yep. My sister came along for the family weekend trip. My uncle, together with his two daughters, Linne and Mia, and his son, Klint, drove their wrangler jeep for the trip. Oh yeah, and they also brought Klint’s nanny, Liezel. Linne is 14, Mia is 11, and Klint’s 5.


My aunt brought with her her oldest daughter Sherry and her youngest son Marc Sherwin, and Marc Sherwin’s nanny and a 3rd cousin, Marriani. We like to call Sherwin Maki because he’s a bit “mucky” for a toddler. I know toddlers are supposed to be like that but some times he gets too excited.


For the totality: my uncle’s family boasts 4 members including him and excluding my late aunt; my aunt’s family boasts 3 members including her. As you can see, I didn’t count the two nannies.


The wrangler jeep wasn’t that small but because we exceeded its load limit, we were 11 riding the damn thing, we cramped it up like a can of sardines.


We stayed in a hotel in Molo, Château-something, but we were supposed to stay at their place at Savannah at Mandurriao, Iloilo city if not for the busted lights. I had to stay with them to watch over my little sister.


Before the Saturday ended for me to meet them, I went through a grueling ROTC marching drills practice but I could say it was worth it. I made a friend, Stephen, who is taking HRM at the same university and also a next-door neighbor. Our apartments are close to each other making as next-door neighbors, as I have said before.


We, the family, met at SM City, which is a high profile mall in this part of the country. I couldn’t control myself buying such linear items: a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (which I will read later), a dragonology book, a vcd of The League of Extraordinary Men starring Sean Connery, a MAD magazine issue mainly about Superman Returns, a Starlog magazine issue with articles about the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in XMEN III, a Zoids Blox toy (Nightwise, an owl type aircraft), and two additional cards: one for a Pokemon TCG and the other for a Yugi-Oh TCG. Oh, and did I mention I wasted myself in arcade games? God, I’m such a geek.


So the trip went great. That is until my cousin, Linne, imparted to me the news about SAVE copying MY idea incorporating a forums website for the high school. I’m from the Regional Science High School for Region VI (RSHS VI) and SAVE (Students’ Active Voice in Education) is just one of the two political parties that gets each other’s panties up in a bunch.


I’m from SPEED (Students’ Party of Excellence in Education Development) and I wasn’t this dedicated to the party before. It all started during my 2nd year in RSHS. The SPEED party invited me and being the extracurricular activist that I am, I jumped right in. Little did I know, I would destroy more than my credibility in this dirty field. I lost the election, I ran as a PIO, to some guy older than me. I knew I wouldn’t win. 2 years later, I’d become a campaign manager and one of the guys behind the party. We had an outstanding line-up, if I’d say so myself. Unfortunately, we lost. Only two of our candidates made it. I promised I wouldn’t bring this up anymore but to hell with that. I’ve been a dumbass, I enjoyed that effin’ ride.


During that campaign manager year, I began just doing it for fun and to help my cousin and friends who ran in our name. Most of those in the line-up of ours were like family to me, especially my cousin Linne. Then the battle began to get dirty. Rumors of the “other” party bribing students to vote rose. I never cared about that nor do I care about it now. What ignited my fire was them blaming our President Candidate Damie for something I know she couldn’t have done. Damie has a twin sister Iah and Iah won her part. Both of them are like family to me and to see one cry sincerely made me bled like some leaky faucet. Damn them, I went nuts and proceeded to tell them off. Specifically, to a friend whom I’ll hide under “Vanesa”. Vanesa, then told Iola, another pseudonym, and it escalated further to lots of crying and apologizing and crapping my pants.


Years passed and Vanesa and I buried the hatchet. Since we became friends again, I made her some custom graphics and showed her the prototype forums website I was going to use as Linne’s presidential proposal this upcoming election. The last weekend, Linne tells me of the SAVE copycat news. Coincidence? F**k.


Last year, when I was the campaign manager of SPEED, there were rumors that the SAVE copied our presidential proposals. Damn! I found it hard to edit our candidates’ faulty grammars and then they’d just swoop in and steal them? I let that one pass even though we had witnesses who were neutral. Then déjà vu. This is getting a bit cliché, won’t you agree?


Now, this just makes my guilt of not printing any articles of SAVE candidates who were in the school paper vanish in a puff of black smoke. Hey, we had standards and unfortunately they didn’t cut it. They sucked. The grammar and language were coarse and their poems, actually just one of them, reminded me of a grade school retard who ate paste.


“…every time you zoom, flowers would bloom?…” or something like that was in a poem of hers. God, that made my tongue bleed. I puked in disgust. She was a freaking high school student and in top five of the smartest in their class! For crying out loud, how stupid did her poem get?!


I hate politics. Abusing my power as the Editor-in-Chief was a one shot action. I’m not doing that again. Oh and by the way, it’s the tagalog version’s fault we still haven’t printed the issue. We’re all done in our version.


Actually, if they went to those lengths just to win then they could call themselves “real politicians”. Good luck with that. They actually went through hell just to beat us. I’d cut them some slack for determination but I remembered I don’t even respect them. Sheesh! I didn’t even know we’re that hard to beat to begin with. Deployment of such genuine political arsenal/strategy is, after all, only used against tough opponents. Propaganda, bribes, lies… Everything is truly legal in this kind of war.


I really hate politics.