Preposterous expectations!

Preposterous expectations!

The attacks on Nancy Binay in the social networking sites have become irrational. Cyber-bullies have found another victim to play with. These tirades are expected to continue even if something tragic will ensue later on; the slanderous minds seem insatiable and rotten to the core. Netizens could claim that they are doing this just for fun but, of course, always at the expense of their victim.

Pissed off with the results of the election, netizens have trained their guns on Senator-elect Nancy Binay. They saw the opportunity to bully her anew and ventilate their frustrations on the sad fate that Dick Gordon, Edward Hagedorn and Risa Hontiveros have suffered despite their credentials. Her critics have chided her for her lack of professional qualification and previous public service records. They have ridiculed her and crafted “meme” to make her looks funny and stupid. Their slanders have no limit.

Senator-elect Nancy Binay may have been hurting too much already. She does not deserve such treatment.

Her failure to engage Risa Hontiveros in a debate might have nothing to do with the ranting of her critics. Cyber-bullies might have disliked her simply because of her looks or the color of her skin. She is short. She is not a mestiza. Neither does she look and talk smart the way Grace Poe, Loren Legarda and Risa Hontiveros do. She is simply ordinary.

Moreover, her lack of qualifications or track records for public service might also have nothing to do with the frustrations of the netizens. Netizens’ preposterous expectations bring about their frustrations. They have expected too much, or wrongly too much, from a failed political system. They have conceived the results of the elections even before the votes have been counted. Sadly, they even thought that theirs are decisions and preferences far better than the choices of the less articulate poor majority in the Philippine society.

But netizens are wrong about many things. For one, they missed the point about the failure of their favourite candidates to make it in the list of the needed twelve. They failed to consider the basic premise that any candidate means nothing to the poor and less educated voters unless he or she speaks the language which they understand. Naturally, no Dick, Edward and Risa would be voted unless they have learned to talk about the needs of the poor. They may be good in debates and polemics but their failure to articulate the poor’s need to eat or be sheltered put them beyond the consciousness of the voters. For the poor know only simple things and as such, they could remember only as much as their bodies could recall. Truly, an old politician’s trick is always relevant during elections: feed them to let them remember you every day as their bellies are empty every single day of the year.

Like it and share it: netizens’ tools for spreading the truth and at times, for slanderous destructions.

Poor Nancy, the color of her skin does not suit well in the eyes of the minority who have access to social networking sites. Inevitably, she needs to work hard to bring the web to her ill-educated constituency to give them the power of liking and sharing anything good about her.