Today Filipinos are going to vote for their senators, congressional and party-list representatives, and local government officials. And for the first time in my life, I am not so excited about voting.
In my past life, I was deeply involved in national and local elections. Ever since I was old enough to vote, I have always been part of an electoral campaign. I was so involved that the rhythms and seasons of my life were synchronized with Philippine elections. The periodization of my personal life was based on political administrations. I can only remember what happened to me based on who was running the country at that time. Politics was my reference point. It’s sad, I know.
I have been detoxing for years now, choosing to reclaim a life that is more balanced and less crazy, and my quality of life has improved exponentially. Now that I am not too close to it, I am able to look at our elections from a more nuanced perspective.
If we base it on how the 2025 electoral campaign has been framed, the senatorial elections is just a battle between those who will vote to impeach the Vice-President versus those who will not.
Yes, with all the many complex problems we face as a nation, our choice for the Senate is reduced to the political survival of one leader.
How Filipinos are certain that the candidates they will vote for will guarantee the outcome they want when the time comes is beyond me. Especially since they have been so wrong before.
It’s often repeated — it’s a numbers game. So we must vote straight and vote as one block. That’s the justification they offer why we are being urged to vote for candidates we won’t probably vote for in our student government when we were in school.
Is democracy just a numbers game? While majority rule is a core democratic principle, reducing democracy to mere numbers oversimplifies its complexity.
Numbers are indispensable for legitimacy to reflect the consent of the governed. Democracy relies on counting votes to reflect collective preferences. But what do these numbers truly mean if the system is broken?
Countless studies have analyzed how our system is broken. Even without knowing those studies, most Filipinos have experienced how broken it is with chronic issues like corruption, institutional gridlock, entrenched inequality. These flaws distort representation, undermine accountability, and erode public trust.
Exhibit A is our current party-list system and how it has been co-opted by dominant political families misrepresenting themselves as marginalized. The political dynasties have taken over the very mechanism of proportional representation intended to ensure that disadvantaged groups in society are represented in Congress.
In a recent special report, Rappler noted that “at least 93 of the 155 party-list groups running — or about 60 percent — have two or more nominees who share the same surname or middle name, which suggests possible family relationships among their own nominees.”
Yes, we have political dynasties in party-list groups, too.
A system where candidates are dominated by a few families raises serious concerns about whether it can be considered a true democracy. We might hold elections, but the concentration of power in dynastic networks undermines core democratic principles like equality of opportunity, meritocracy, and true representation.
Although democracy gives any citizen, regardless of background, the right to run for office, when political power is monopolized by a few families, it creates systemic barriers for outsiders, stifling competition and reinforcing privilege.
Voters may feel forced to support a dynasty due to lack of alternatives, weakening accountability. A narrow elite cannot reflect the diversity of a population’s needs, leading to policies that favor entrenched interests over the broader public good.
Some would argue that people freely choose dynastic candidates despite alternatives. This may reflect democratic agency, but it may also be a symptom of systemic failures in political education and fair competition.
We also need to examine if checks and balances exist in our system. Do our social institutions like the courts, media, and civil society check dynastic abuses? Or do dynasties also control all levers of power (media, judiciary, economy)? If that is the case, then our elections are neither free nor fair.
Democracy requires more than numerical majorities; it demands accountable institutions, transparency, and leaders who act in the public interest.
We need not look far and wide for a concrete example. The last 2022 elections offer a good lesson. A majority elected leaders who promised unity but ended up delivering chaos and division. Not to mention incompetence and grave abuse of power. They won numerical majorities through elections but eroded democratic principles.
And with “ayuda” politics, elections are swayed through campaign spending, lobbying, and media control. In this case, numbers are distorted by money and power.
So democracy is not just a numbers game. Numbers are good but the real strength of our democracy lies in how it balances majority rule with minority rights, procedural fairness with substantive justice, and popular will with institutional integrity.
Our votes only mean something in a system where power is not only derived from the people but exercised for the people, in all their diversity.
When the voting and counting are over and winners have been proclaimed, our engagement as citizens must continue. Let’s intensify political education, dismantle unjust structures and build more just ones, demand transparency and accountability, and organize for collective action.
We cannot rely on our politicians to change a system that is benefitting them.
Let us have more than the numbers for the 2028 elections. Let us start fixing our broken system now and take our democracy more seriously.
