I started 2021 with such hope in the possibility of gathering together the politicized generations X, millennial, and Z towards affecting 2022 election outcomes. I sent out documents, talked to people, revised the documents, talked to even more people and groups, and kept that hope going. The vision, many agreed, was wonderful. We want to talk platforms not personalities; we want to champion the issues that we think are important for 2022, list the demands that we want candidates to talk about and take a stand on, if they want our vote.
I had hoped that if the Filipinos in their 40s, (Generation X, the Martial Law generation) and younger (millennials, gen Z) could organize themselves into the monolith that they are, proven as that is by the fact of our having risen to the occasion of the most vulnerable during the lockdowns last year, then all other generations (hey boomers!), and sectors (business sector, NGOs and CSOs, the Church, the schools) would have no choice but to listen, and join in.
I had thought that this was the perfect time, when so many of us in the middle have been politicized by the past pandemic year, and when it is clear that we have much to unite on not just among ourselves but especially and more importantly, with the masses. We have all suffered in this pandemic and under this governance. There is no reason to imagine we cannot unite on that.
Hey (LiberalParty) boomer!
But the year unfolded and it was difficult not to lose hope as our voices got drowned out by the massive display of LiberalParty boomers, talking 2022 elections like it’s nothing but a magic bullet named Leni Robredo. Old faces and voices have spent so much time talking about the miracle (that is VP Leni), and the good (that is VP Leni) VS evil, and even the disente (that is VP Leni) VS the bastos.
Younger VP Leni/LiberalParty supporters echo these soundbites thoughtlessly, forgetting all notions of critique and analysis that they would otherwise be at the forefront of on Twitter. All of them, boomer and otherwise, are unwelcoming of basic facts: we only have 11 months to go before the elections, and a candidate who is in the bottom of the surveys, has had no funds to fight propaganda against her in the past five years, and is cradled by, spoken for, bound to a party that has been discredited for years—how can this candidate even win, in real terms?
Of course one understands the idolatry, and the idealism, the belief that what we need at this point is someone who is the complete opposite of Duterte, someone who is his anti-thesis. And yes, VP Leni fits the bill, and I will even agree that it would be great to have her as President. But I will insist on asking: is what we want, is who we want, what will win 2022 for us?
Ah but these questions are not welcome, and one is quickly called out, or cancelled, for even daring to think differently and out loud about who else can run other than the Vice President. Such is the crisis of these times.
1Sambayang boomers
No one knows this more than 1Sambayan, which has been attacked time and again for even considering Isko Moreno and Grace Poe as candidates, never mind that this might be their only smart move, based as it is (was) on surveys (surveys which LiberalParty/VPLeni supporters like to dismiss or ignore).
Run primarily by boomers across the political spectrum though, 1Sambayan was doomed from the moment it thought that candidates would agree to go through an “application process” for getting the group’s endorsement. Why would anyone submit themselves to a process with an organization that, for all intents and purposes, looks like a LiberalParty formation?
Its other failure: The decision to imagine that any of us on this side of the generation gap would respond well to the idea of being told that who they choose is who we all should choose. After all, there is nothing that will get the younger generations to look the other way than to be told that they have no choice but to follow what the elders say.
This is why this kind of boomer discourse that has seeped into our politics is making a mess of 2022 for us. It’s not just its refusal at inclusivity, as it is—and probably more important—how it speaks from a high horse that denies us any opportunity at forging unities. It traps us in conversations that inevitably end with this particular set of boomers using their age card, their I-survived-Martial-Law-card, their papunta-ka-pa-lang-pabalik-na-ako card, only to wax romantic about what nation aspires to become, or to claim to know what a trending hashtag really means (they generally have no idea).
Ultimately this state of (boomer) discourse completely silences what everyone else wants to say, and shuts down possibilities for discussion and dialogue. Let’s not even begin about forging unities.
Boomer bummer
Between 1Sambayan and the LP faction (and maybe the Left spectrum too), it is the boomers who are running the Opposition’s show. And this is as bad as it sounds.
This is not just a failure to read the room filled with younger generations who are denied the space to speak and are dismissed like the surveys are. This is also the failure to acknowledge a real technology and creativity gap, one that these particular boomers either like to deny exists, or believe they understand even when they don’t. Either way, they have taken over the Opposition’s discourse, and they are the noisiest on social media. And they’re not just noisy about who they believe in, they’re also terribly divisive, making hugot from fundamental historical differences with each other that few of us understand or care about.
Because to many of us, what is clear is that we need to strategize for a 2022 win. To many of us it is clear that we cannot win this using old ways, with the same rhetoric, and the same tactics. Of course this “us” isn’t going to get the funding of big business, not when the elders among us are the noisiest, and the first to put us down. And therein lies our crisis.
So here we are in the second half of 2021, with 11 months to go the 2022 elections, and we are nowhere. And no, don’t sell me the idea of a united front. In case it’s not clear yet, the only way this will work is if the imagination of those in the middle is captured, cutting as it does across the younger generations from X to Z, and millennials. We’re not even talking about the masses yet.
How are we losing 2022? Ask the boomer beside you. ***