A CANDIDATE’S DIARY, DAY 5: WHY DO THEY COME, WHY DO THEY WAIT?

Even my closest advisers and friends are left in awe and amazement every time they see huge crowds of people waiting for hours for my arrival.

“I cannot understand this. Other politicians have to use free transportation to bring people to their rallies. Your legions of followers will come on their own and wait for hours until you arrive,” said political strategist Antonio Gentica, a former Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) officer who is my acting political adviser.

In Barangay Palau, Libungan people came as early as 9 a.m. for the 3 p.m. caucus, in Montay, Libungan they came as early as 4 p.m. for the 6 p.m. mini-rally while in Alamada, people from the mountain barangays came to the poblacion area as early as 12 noon for a rally which started at 4 p.m.

Many of them have to walk back home to their remote villages in the dark after the rally “just to see and listen to Manny Pinol.”

Some of my friends call this phenomenon as “the revolt of the masses.”

With the bad state of roads in the villages, the very low prices for their products like corn, palay, copra and rubber, with the brownouts, with their children unable to go to college because the scholarship program has been politicized and the hospitals could not serve the poor because there are no medicines, there is indeed enough reason for the masses to revolt.

I am also mesmerized by the reaction of the people to my presence. Some of them would cry as they embrace me, many would shout in approval of the things that I say and they applaud loudly whenever I talk about their dreams and aspirations.

For me this phenomenon is nothing more than people seeing themselves and hearing themselves in me.

When I talk about their problems, their dreams and aspirations, they hear themselves talk.

When they see that I am angry at government neglect and the lack of service, they see their angry selves in me.

The words that I say are the words that they wanted to say but they have no voice to say it.

This could only be the reason why they come and they wait for hours.

They come and they wait because they would like to hear themselves speak through a person they can identify with – Manny Pinol.

(Photo caption: This huge crowd of village people gathered at the Alamada Public Market as early as 12 noon for a rally which started at 4 p.m.)