Hypocrisy doesn't always crawl in the dark. Sometimes, it parades in daylight, wears an orange sash, and gives false promises for change.
Just last week, a senatoriable made waves on social media after stating one of her campaign agendas: supporting the mental health of teachers. According to her, putting mental health in the same light as physical health is crucial as it affects how professionals will work in society, especially for educators whose system has exhausted them both physically and mentally.
At first glance, her advocacy seems noble to many. After all, mental health is a crucial issue that must never be overlooked by our government leaders. Moreover, educators are among the most overworked yet underappreciated workers in the society. Our responsibility is to lessen their burden to maintain their good standing as professionals and humans.
However, in a country where empathy can be measured by how many sentiments one can express and how many voters one can deceive, their sweetest promises mean hollow, particularly when announced by someone backed by an established dynasty that has done more harm than good to Filipinos.
Behind this senatoriable's advocacy is a legacy unwanted—troubled and controversial from the beginning. Her family, entrenched in a congressional seat since 1987, has made efforts to privatize services that meant worse for the people. Recently, the government has launched investigations into its water utility business due to the growing clamor of their clients: skyrocketing payments, unreliable access, and poor quality of drinking water. Regardless if these inquiries are politically charged, these issues expose them as business-minded individuals who took people hostage under the guise of better service.
And that is just one aspect. Land-grabbing allegations tied to her family's property development firms continue to displace families and erode local communities. What's ironic is that her mother, once a chairperson on environment and natural resources, settled for destroying farmlands to build expensive houses and earn private money. They even made fun of the workers’ situations and appeals, berating their efforts and showing off their lack of ground.
These instances further blur her aim to make workers' lives easier. After all, the very systems that perpetuate this trauma cannot be separated from the actors—her family, explicitly—who benefit from them.
And so, who is she to brand herself as the "new face of youth" when she, in fact, is only a ploy to extend her family's grip on national politics? When politics turns into a family business, everyone suffers. When millions of dreams and lives are crushed due to their self-serving agendas, it's hard to believe they are "championing" a noble cause.
Using mental health as a platform among many agendas placed in her television ads, all while staying mum on pressing issues, is downright offensive and disingenuous. It does not exist randomly; it is rooted in anxiety, stress, and mental burnout that continue to affect not only teachers but the ordinary masa who are victims of poverty and systemic abuse, most of which are made by the very system she is a part of.
Mental health advocacy for educators must go beyond rhetoric. It must be put through a steadfast commitment to structural reform. This includes ensuring fair wages across the board, adequate staffing to maintain control of workload, access to counseling, and genuine community-led engagement that empowers them beyond the classroom. These standards, however, will never thrive in a climate of abuse, where political families decide to put themselves first over the welfare of the masa.
These reforms must be more than lip service, more so of the stagnant bills this senatorial aspirant has passed in the Congress. It must challenge the status quo and dismantle abusive monopolies, no matter how close they get to becoming powerful. Most importantly, a people-centered service must be upheld to keep everything realistic and in order. Anything less and this advocacy will only fall into someone's mouth, waiting to be used to fool people again.
Filipinos must remain vigilant about who they want to vote for. Until real change is made through action, not slogans, we must always demand accountability. Elections are not a game, nor a family business, and surely not a treasury of fake promises.
People will always remember who has kept them—and who has not. Justice will always fall into their hands
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Opinion