You'll get the leaders you want

Early results show that the Opposition is in the lead. Naturally, I'm disappointed.

The elections remind me of the time I ran for a seat in the Student Council back in High School. Originally, I had no plans of running but after the popular guys established their party and announced their candidacy, the assistant principal called me and another batchmate to a "secret" meeting and castigated us for being indifferent to school politics and urged us "good guys" to establish a party and campaign for seats in the student council. At that time, we knew that we had little chance of prevailing against the candidates of the popular party. They were the cool guys, the guys everybody knew by name, the guys expected by everybody to stick it up to the strict and tight-assed administration and win for us liberties and concessions, like more parties with girls! For students in an exclusive Catholic boys' school, that was a big deal. On the other hand, we were viewed as the nerds' party, conservative lackeys for the school administration, obviously not hip like the other guys. As expected, the popular party dominated the polls and if I recall correctly, we managed to get only one or two seats of the ten. Sounds familiar? Anyway, I wasn't very aware of the achievements of the student council at that time, apart from the interactions we had with the Paulinians of Quezon City, as I was too busy doing stuff in the part of the school. Yeah, I didn't get the student council secretary post. Anyway, the student council president at that time, distinguished, himself, along with the Corps Commander, for beating up a lower batch guy.

Anyway, the whole thing, end to end, gave me a perspective on politics and Filipino [and perhaps generic human] pyschology, which gives me little confidence in the electorate during elections and "popular" candidates. I expect to scratch my head on a regular basis in the next few years...